Archives for August 6th, 2003

MORE STARTER HOMES FOR PUBLIC SECTOR STAFF

Headlines, PublicNet: 6 August, 2003

Public sector staff including teachers, police and health workers working in housing hot spots in London and the South East are being urged to apply now for funding from the Starter Home Initiative. A publicity campaign is being launched to raise awareness of the help that is available from the Initiative.The aim is to invest 1 billion pounds in key worker housing schemes over the next three years to March 2006. This is a four fold increase compared to the last three years when 250 million was available to help 3,300 public service staff to achieve home ownership and ease recruitment and retention problems.

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COUNCILS MOVING TO ELECTRONIC MARKETPLACE

Headlines, PublicNet: 6 August, 2003

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Local Government Association have devised a blueprint to speed the movement of councils towards electronic procurement of goods and services. The draft National Strategy document, which is open for consultation until 19 September 2003, sets out a vision for 2006 where councils will have forged partnerships with a range of public, private and voluntary sector suppliers, be obtaining greater value from all categories of procurement expenditure through their own procurement strategies and be stimulating markets and using their buying power creatively to drive innovation in the design of services.The strategy identifies the need for a cultural shift in the whole concept of procurement. Councils in England spend some 40 billion pounds on procurement annually and co-ordinating this immense purchasing power could bring substantial benefits. The draft makes it clear that this market position needs to be handled well to make best use of the leverage and deliver the potential savings.

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CIVIL SERVICE STATISTICS

Abstracts, PublicNet: 6 August, 2003

Civil servants make up almost 2 per cent of the UK workforce (29.4 million on a headcount basis at June 2001). Just under 18 per cent of those in employment worked in the public sector. Over half of these were in local government, around 30 per cent in public corporations and almost 10 per cent in the Civil Service. The remainder were employed in the Armed Forces, NHS and other central government organisations. The workforce as a whole grew by just over 1.4 million between June 1991and June 2001.Employment in the private sector grew from around 22.1 million to 24.3 million, while public sector employment remained at just over 5.1 million. The Civil Service accounted for almost 10 per cent of public sector employment in 2001. Civil Service posts increased by some 7000 during the year. The average salary of civil servants was 16,980 pounds compared to 16,400 pounds in 2001. This is an increase of 3.5 per cent over the year.Civil Service Statistics 2002 is published by the Cabinet Office and is available at http://www.civil-service.gov.uk/statistics/documents/pdf/css02.pdf

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