Whitehall blamed for older people dying before finances are sorted

Whitehall blamed for elderly dying before financial affairs are sorted

Elderly people are dying before their financial affairs are put in order because of Whitehall bungling and delays, it has been claimed.
Amid mounting outrage at the problems with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) in England, the Conservatives said they would be asking questions in Parliament and seeking a meeting with Jack Straw, the justice secretary.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Six year wait for social housing, families warned

Families who have their home repossessed after failing to meet mortgage payments have been warned to expect a six-year wait for social housing.
People who find themselves homeless because they cannot keep up mortgage repayments amid the deepening credit crisis will have to wait for more than six years before they are permanently rehoused in a two-bedroom property, the Local Government Association has said.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Too posh to adopt?

While nobody would claim the system is perfect, all sorts of people (mostly, as it happens, white, middle-class couples) adopt children in the UK all the time – 3,737 last year. So how have we got to a point where the perception is so far removed from the reality?

Read more on this story in The Guardian

We are trying to make school admissions as fair as possible

The extract from Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson’s book which the Guardian published says that I “declared that schools should select pupils by lottery” and that I think effective school choice is “vaguely reprehensible” (How Britain’s middle class was betrayed, June 3). In fact, I do not think that most schools should select pupils by lottery, and I have always been strongly in favour of maximising parental choice.

Schools adjudicator Philip Hunter