A leading council chief executive has been appointed a trouble-shooter to help local councils pull back from the brink of failure.Ted Cantle, who has been chief executive of Nottingham City Council for ten years is to become associate director of the Improvement and Development Agency’s (IDeA) performance support unit from April 2001. 

The government has a new weapon to drive efficiency in the NHS in the shape of National Reference Costs 2000 for each NHS Trust in England.These show latest information on the variation in costs of treatment in different NHS Trusts.
The Government says it will use reference costs as part of its moves to give greater autonomy to NHS Trusts who put funding to best use. 

Hendry C, Woodward S, Bradley P, Perkins SHuman Resource Management Journal, (UK), 2000 Vol 10 No 3
Start page: 46. No of pages: 17
Argues that the link between rewards and performance is not perfectly understood in UK organizations. Believes that there needs to be more clarity concerning the definition of performance, whether it is measurable and how it can be improved before human resource management can be expected to develop an effective reward system to encourage it.