MP for Brentwood and Ongar Eric Pickles has put forward proposals that local councils and other public bodies in England would have to identify all staff earning £58,200 or more. The minister included it among proposals being put out for consultation – although staff could decline to have their name published.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) opposed the BBC axing staff positions while it is making cutbacks on its website department.
Jobs and services are threatened due to Ealing Council’s budget cuts being much worse than expected. Looking at its funding gained centrally from Westminster, Ealing must now make cuts of 30 per cent instead of the 28 per cent forecast last year.
Crime in the nation’s capital is continuing to go down. Figures from the Metropolitan Police Service show year-on-year reductions for January to December 2010.
The High Court in London this week (commencing Monday, January 17) is due to see the main union representing the civil service mount a legal challenge regarding working conditions. The union has rejected changes to a redundancy scheme, saying if proposals go ahead compensation payouts could be reduced "at will" at a time when spending cuts were expected to lead to job losses in the civil service.
A threat of a Tube strike over pay has emerged for the day of the royal wedding. The union Aslef said it was considering calling on its London Underground (LU) driver members to walk out on April 29, when the royal wedding is due at Westminster Abbey.
London was one of the few areas which saw their unemployment rates fall slightly, while the rest of the UK suffered rising figures of people out of work, which came as something of a shock to analysts. The unemployment rates in London in the three months to October stood at 376,000 (the equivalent of 9.1% of the working population), which was down 4,000. The stats for the South East were 276,000 (6.2 per cent), up 3,000.
Thanet council in Essex, controlled by the Conservatives, and Hastings council in Sussex, run by Labour, both had to receive the highest-possible level of grants to make up for cuts in central government cash for 2011-12.
The Coalition Government has launched an independent review into how school capital is spent so it can be focused on where primary school places are most urgently needed. Figures show schools in some parts of London are taking large numbers of extra pupils.
A Christmas card with a difference is falling onto the doormats of thousands of people in Surrey – it is not a message of seasonal goodwill, but a warning from police about burglars. Surrey Police said these postcards were being distributed in areas of known burglary activity in the month leading up to Christmas. Supt Ian Chandler said the most prolific burglars in Surrey could expect a visit from police.