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General Reports and Other Publications
NO: Torbay Council has refused to pay the full compensation recommended by the Local Government Ombudsman to a man it had made bankrupt without having proper regard to his mental health.
Ombudsman Dr Jane Martin found that the Council’s failure caused serious injustice, as it led to the debtor incurring costs of £24,000, and so she recommended the Council to pay £25,000 compensation: the Council has offered to pay £1,000.
Ombudsman Dr Jane Martin found that the Council’s failure caused serious injustice, as it led to the debtor incurring costs of £24,000, and so she recommended the Council to pay £25,000 compensation: the Council has offered to pay £1,000.
In response, the Ombudsman has taken the unusual step of issuing a second report, calling on the Council to reconsider its position and remedy the injustice by paying the man the full £25,000.
ACE: Arts Council England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have published a report in to the A Night Less Ordinary scheme which ran from February 2009 until March 2011.
A Night Less Ordinary was a pilot scheme to test whether theatre attendance by under-26s could be increased if price was removed as a barrier by offering free theatre tickets to children and young people at more than 200 participating venues throughout England.
FDA: In its two reports published last week, ARC (the Association of Revenue and Customs) has questioned the Government's commitment to tackle tax avoidance by big business and the wealthy.
The 2 papers respond to the Government's proposal for an anti-avoidance rule, and a recent Public Accounts Committee report on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
The 2 papers respond to the Government's proposal for an anti-avoidance rule, and a recent Public Accounts Committee report on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
NIESR: The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has published research into employer & employee experiences of the ‘Fit Note’ which replaced the ‘Sick Note’ in April 2010.
It concludes that the fit note can improve practice in enabling employees to return to work, through adjustments, such as amended duties or temporarily reduced hours. However, the fit note frequently lacks information from GPs to enable employers to make adjustments and these are not always implemented effectively.
CeBR: As the amount of data continues to grow exponentially, compounded by the internet, social media, cloud computing & mobile devices, it poses both a challenge and an opportunity for organisations – how to manage, analyse & make use of the ever-increasing amount of data being generated.
In the Centre for Economics and Business Research’s study, they investigate how organisations can unlock the economic value of big data through the adoption of big data analytics.
By using big data analytics solutions, and specifically high-performance analytics, businesses & governments can analyse huge amounts of data in seconds & minutes to reveal previously unseen patterns, sentiments and customer intelligence.
By using big data analytics solutions, and specifically high-performance analytics, businesses & governments can analyse huge amounts of data in seconds & minutes to reveal previously unseen patterns, sentiments and customer intelligence.
RUSI: Africa represents a potential new front for counter-terrorism in Britain and the linkages already evident across the continent suggest the development of some disturbing new trends, highlights a new report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Global Jihad Sustained Through Africa outlines that since the central leadership of Al-Qa'ida is weakened & challenged, the terrorist movement is looking to partnerships in Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa to re-group & re-energise.
IEA: Not enough is being done to reduce the extraordinarily high cost of housing in Britain. This is the finding of a new report released recently by the Institute of Economic Affairs - Abundance of land, shortage of housing. In the USA, Germany & Switzerland, real-terms house prices are still close to their 1975 levels.
IPCC: The Independent Police Complaints Commission found that “professional boundaries became blurred, imprudent decisions taken and poor judgement shown” by senior police personnel following completion of two investigations into allegations linked to the relationship between the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and a former senior executive at the News of the World newspaper.
