The Department for Transport confirmed it has officially signed the Northern franchise nine-year contract with Arriva Rail North Ltd and the TransPennine Express franchise seven-year contract with First Trans Pennine Express Limited. The deals provide an unprecedented package of improvements, bringing about the biggest transformation to rail journeys in the north of England and Scotland […]

A contract worth £4.7m will see improvements take place in Essex providing smoother and safer journeys for drivers. Improvements on the M11 and A120 have moved a step closer with the appointment of a contractor for the scheme. Interserve Construction Ltd on behalf of Highways England will be carrying out a package of works on […]

Renewables are now the single largest contributor to electricity generation in Scotland at a record 38 per cent of total output – higher than both nuclear (33 per cent) and fossil fuels (28 per cent) for the first time, statistics have revealed. Renewable sources delivered 49.7% of gross electricity consumption in 2014 – up from […]

Skills shortages are continuing to bite with firms identifying this as the top threat to the UK’s attractiveness as a place to do business for the second year running, according to the latest CBI/Accenture Employment Trends Survey. The annual survey – in its 18th year, and with 342 respondents employing nearly 1m employees – found […]

Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has strengthened its leadership team and improved how it is run, following action taken by Monitor. The trust, which provides a range of community and mental health service to patients from over 200 sites, has made fundamental changes to the way the organisation is structured giving clinicians more control over […]

New changes have been announced to stop highly paid bosses getting to keep generous exit payments when they leave one organisation only to join another. Tens of thousands of highly paid public sector bosses are to be forced to pay back their golden goodbyes, or exit payments, if they return to the sector within a […]

The Chancellor George Osborne has appointed Phil Graham as CEO of the National Infrastructure Commission. Mr Graham joins the National Infrastructure Commission from the Department for Transport, where he has worked on many of the UK’s most important infrastructure projects. Phil Graham led the development of the government’s high speed rail strategy, as well as […]

A new commission will be tasked with unlocking billions of pounds worth of dormant assets, such as stocks and shares that have been untouched for more than 15 years. Over the next year, the independent Dormant Assets Commission will identify new pools of unclaimed assets which might include stocks, shares, pensions and bonds. It was […]

A jointly funded project by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and Innovate UK for an autonomous, modular sensor system could be a game-changer for the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and security industry.  The Sensing for Asset Protection with Integrated Electronic Networked Technology (SAPIENT) project has demonstrated a modular hierarchical autonomous sensor system which […]