Accounting & Business
Profile: Ian Knowles: Accounting & Business
The View From: Ian Knowles FCCA,
Assistant Director, Children, School and Families, Hertfordshire County Council
Q. What are your main challenges?
Ensuring that central services understand the needs of the frontline and that frontline services understand the corporate context. To reduce costs, back office functions must change. We must ensure that increased responsibilities for frontline managers do [...]
Tough times for charities: Accounting & Business
These are tough times for charities. When recession hits, the public becomes less generous. Worse still, organisations funded by public money expect to have grants and contracts cut substantially.
Analysis of charitable giving conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation together with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) found that donations to charities fell 11% [...]
Total Place - Total Success?: Accounting & Business
Joining-up public services has been a holy grail of public policy since the Labour government was merely a Labour opposition. Yet the intervening years of government hectoring, performance targets and constant restructuring of public bodies has always seemed to offer more hope than actuality when it comes to abolishing the public service silos.
But, just as [...]
Profile: Ian Knowles: Accounting & Business
The View From: Ian Knowles FCCA,
Assistant Director, Children, School and Families, Hertfordshire County Council
Q. What are your main challenges?
Ensuring that central support services understand the needs of frontline services and frontline services understand the corporate context. Frontline services have priority over back office functions, but to reduce costs back office functions must change how [...]
A different model for public service delivery: Accounting & Business
Radical things are happening in some Conservative-controlled local authorities. Councils are re-examining exactly what services they must provide and how. The result of their deliberations is that many more are outsourcing a range of back and front office services, while at least one is considering introducing two-tier services – the basic option is free, while [...]
A different vision for public service delivery: Accounting & Business
Radical things are happening in several Conservative-controlled local authorities. Councils are considering exactly what services they must provide and how. The result is that many more are outsourcing a range of back and front office services, while at least one is considering introducing two-tier services – the basic option is free, while the affluent will [...]
Accounting & Business - news September 2010
Auditors face tougher regime
An investigation by the Financial Reporting Council into the role of auditors in the global financial crisis could lead to tougher demands and sanctions on accountants. An FRC study will consider what lessons can be learnt from the crisis, with the results to be published in the autumn. Stephen Haddrill, Chief Executive [...]
Accounting & Business - news June 2010
UK news
Ernst & Young fined £1/2m over Equitable failings
Ernst & Young has been fined £500,000 and ordered to pay £2.4m in costs by an Appeal Tribunal considering the firm’s audit of Equitable Life. But the original fine of £4.2m and costs of £5.75m imposed by the Joint Disciplinary Tribunal were cut substantially by the Tribunal. [...]
Accounting & Business - news June 2010
UK NEWS
IASB proposes pension accounting revolution (long lead) [158]
IASB proposals to reform pensions accounting will substantially increase company liabilities and cause extreme balance sheet volatility, claim critics. Under the exposure draft to amend IAS 19 Employee Benefits, entities would have to account immediately for all estimated changes in the cost of providing future pension and [...]
Accounting & Business - news April 2010
UK News
RSM fined over Lehman advice [long, with fast facts]
RSM Tenon has been fined £700,000 by the FSA for failures in advice relating to the sale of structured products backed by Lehman Brothers. The firm was found to have provided unsuitable advice on structured products and pension switching, because of poor systems and controls. The [...]
