News

The Chancellor’s generous promise of £61bn of investment in public services over the next three years comes with strings attached, in the form of a new round of departmental Public Service Agreements.

Announcing the outcome of the government’s third Comprehensive Spending Review in the House of Commons yesterday, Gordon Brown insisted that the new money had to be matched with reform and results.

As well as the creation of the new health and social care inspectorates, a new single housing inspectorate and a new criminal justice system inspection regime, 130 new PSA targets have been agreed across Whitehall.

For the Department of Health, these include improving access to mental health services for adults and children, ensuring a greater percentage of older people are supported intensively at home, reducing the number of children in care convicted or cautioned, and increasing the participation of problem drug users in drug treatment programmes.

The Home Office’s targets include reducing reoffending among young offenders by 5 per cent, ensuring that three-quarters of substantive asylum applications are decided within two months and that a greater number of failed asylum seekers are removed, and bringing about measurable improvements in race equality and community cohesion.

A reduction in truancy levels remains a key target for the Department of Education and Skills

For more information go to www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/spending_review