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‘Fiscal Nimbyism Makes It Far Harder to Fix Public Services’
Fed by an irresponsible media, neither voters nor political leaders are willing to accept the trade-offs inherent in fiscal choices, writes Chris Grey in his monthly column for the Byline Times print edition
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The Government has a Way of Tackling Entrenched Health Inequalities Ready To Go – Will It Implement It?
An evidence-led, long-called for, but under-used programme of checks for people with a learning disability has the potential to help ease health inequalities more widely, Saba Salman reports
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Local Government is on a ‘Precipice’ With Billions in Cuts Coming Soon to These Councils
Cash-strapped local authorities across Britain are teetering on the brink of financial collapse. Here are the ones most at risk
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‘Parents Are Not to Blame for the Cost Demands on a SEND System Under Increasing Pressure’
A recent report was problematic for appearing to place responsibility with ‘demanding parents’ who contribute to local authority financial problems, writes Sharon Smith
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How the Failing Asylum System Contributed to the ‘£22bn Black Hole’ – But Will the Labour Government Fix It?
Accommodation for asylum seekers awaiting Home Office processing amounted to £6.4 billion of the overspend
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Children’s Special Needs System ‘Broken’ – With a Quarter of Councils Facing Bankruptcy by 2026, Report Finds
Councils are struggling to cope with a huge rise in demand while standards in reading, writing, and mathematics have either stagnated or fallen during the past decade
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Sunak’s Government Did Not Know How Schools Spent £9.2 Billion a Year Allocated to Help Disadvantaged Children
‘There has been a lack of sustained progress by government in reducing the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers’, a new report by the National Audit Office has found
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Special Investigation: Society’s Reluctance to Acknowledge the Scale of Child Sexual Abuse and a Lack of Political Support for Its Survivors is Keeping the Vulnerable At Risk
Part Four: The far-right is able to present itself as ‘filling the gap’ left by a lack of services with its own range of ‘support’ for survivors
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Special Investigation: ‘The Far-Right Is Cynically Taking Advantage of Child Sexual Exploitation Survivors’
Andrew Kersley spent five months speaking to survivors of child sexual exploitation and experts on the ‘grooming’ of vulnerable women by far-right groups to understand why it is happening
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Labour Won’t Stick to Conservative Spending Plans, Ed Miliband Confirms
The former party leader told Byline Times that Labour will not ‘not sign up’ to Conservative budgets if the party wins the next general election – a contrast to 1997
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HM Revenue and Customs Phone Line Failure as Customers Spend 798 Years On Hold
David Hencke examines a National Audit Office report revealing HMRC has not done enough to raise awareness of its digital services
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Department of Health Sets Aside £21 Billion for Negligence Cases – But Has No Idea if Situation is Getting Better or Worse
A new report has found the ministry spends £3 billion a year on maternity services but paid out an ‘eye-watering’ £1.1 billion in claims for 2022-23
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The NHS is Now So Under-Pressure People Want to Pay for Treatment, Poll Reveals
A Bylines Times commissioned poll has revealed that people might finally be prepared to pay for better medical care in the UK as frustrations with the service grow
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‘Media Attacks on NHS Translation and Diversity Spending Completely Miss the Point of the Health Service’
The Express suggested that £100 million of NHS spending on translators should be spent on nurses – but ensuring patients get the care they need is fundamental and a legal requirement, writes NHS consultant David Oliver
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Taxpayer to Pay for Radon Crisis at Prison Owned by Duchy of Cornwall – Despite Government Giving It £1.5 Million a Year in Rent
HMP Dartmoor was set to close due to its underfunded and crumbling state before a Government U-turn in 2021
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Outsourcing and Our Hollowed-Out State: A Story of Dependency Without Delivery
Scratch the surface of just about any public service failure of recent years and outsourcing features as a key cause, writes Chris Grey
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‘Mental Health is the Elephant in the Room When It Comes to Prioritising Economic Growth’
Charities have accused the Government of making ‘unsafe and frankly irresponsible’ decisions concerning mental health
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Revealed: Met Police ‘Exit Data’ Shows Just How Bad it is to Work there for Some Staff
Exclusive ‘exit data’ obtained by Byline Times suggests that the force has a long way to go in its claimed attempts to ‘address valid concerns’ about life as a non-white or female employee on the force
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Councils Could be Paying £530 Million a Year to House Vulnerable Children in Unsafe Homes
Former Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield branded the figures from an investigation by Byline Times as ‘extraordinary’ and said that the system was ‘completely dysfunctional’
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Broken Promises on Fixing Social Care Laid Bare
‘Years of fragmented funding and the absence of a clear roadmap has brought the adult social care sector to its knees’ according to the chair of the Public Accounts Committee
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Jeremy Hunt’s Tax Cuts are Paid for by Slashing Public Services – So Why is Labour So Silent About It?
The Government’s ‘slash and crash’ Budget was left largely unscathed by Keir Starmer’s party. Why?
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‘Please Close My Hospital’
Current talk of reform – on all sides of the political spectrum – only protects the status quo, argues Greg Parston
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Revealed: Five Politically-Connected Healthcare Giants Rake in NHS Contracts Worth Billions
Bridgepoint, Bupa, Centene, Spire and UnitedHealth have been implicated in a litany of scandals and controversies in the UK and America
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The Porn Baron Football Boss, his Glamour Model Fiancée and a War With Ofsted Over their ‘Failing’ Children’s Home
When a care home for vulnerable children funded by billionaire West Ham United Chairman David Sullivan, and run by his OnlyFans model reality TV star partner Ampika Pickston, had its registration suspended over safeguarding issues, it led to a strange chain of events and legal threats to this newspaper
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The Politics of Disability: A Forgotten Minister for Forgotten People
The real danger is that disability is regarded as a niche issue which only affects a small group who can easily be ignored, writes Stephen Unwin
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Rape & Serious Sexual Offences Cases Now Represent Record One in Seven of All Trials in Courts Backlog
As the overall crown court backlog hits a record 67,000, Byline Times can reveal the number of ‘RASSO’ cases waiting to be heard has more than tripled in five years
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When Lost Humanity Breaks Down Healthcare
Penny Pepper reflects on the concerning and uplifting behaviours she witnessed during her four-week stay in hospital this summer
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Avoidable Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities: The Statistics that Shame Our Civilised Society
A new report reviewed the deaths of 3,648 people with a learning disability – almost half died an avoidable death
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Revealed: Almost Half of Maternity Wards Offering Substandard Care
Mothers and babies are being put at risk due to severe staff shortages, the official watchdog found
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The Government’s Reforms to Work Capability Benefits Assessment Could Worsen the Mental Health Crisis for Already Vulnerable People
The proposed changes ‘are symptomatic of the continued systematic violation of disabled folk’
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‘The Power Imbalance is Enormous’: Inside the Ordeal of Employment Tribunals
Alicia Clegg reports on how Britain’s employment tribunals are not providing fair and equal access to justice
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‘Adult Social Care is Broken and Heading for a Bigger Crash – and the Government has Repeatedly Made It Worse’
NHS consultant David Oliver argues that the Government since 2010 is to blame for the worsening social care crisis
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Workers Face the Sack if They Don’t Cross Their Own Picket Lines. What Kind of Country is This?
Strike-breaking is now mandatory.
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Who Owns the Thames? Giant Party Boat OceanDiva is Frontline in Battle Over London’s River Amid Claims of ‘Zero Accountability’
The controversy over a £25m party boat speaks to a wider issue: who decides what happens around the Thames?
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‘Once in a Generation’ Plan to Fix Social Care Crisis Is In Crisis After Sunak Slashes Its Budget
Part of the financial crisis facing social care has been the huge rise in inflation and interest rates following former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s controversial budget
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‘If Johnson was Blaming “Bed-Blocking” for COVID Lockdowns, he was Blaming his Own Party’
NHS doctor David Oliver explores how the Conservatives’ NHS policies left it in a dire state and unable to cope with the pandemic
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‘No Patient Should Ever Be Treated Like this Ever Again’
As the new Mental Health Act is quietly dropped, David Hencke reports on how the crisis in mental health services across the country is failing the most vulnerable people in society
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The ‘Postcode Lottery’ of Emergency Ambulance Wait Times
Services in the south-west and east of England are disproportionately affected by problems, a new report by MPs has found
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‘My Emergency Stay in an NHS Intensive Care Unit was a Catastrophic Awakening’
In the first part of a series detailing her journey after several sudden brain haemorrhages and seizures this summer, Penny Pepper reflects on what has changed – for good and for worse – in our NHS
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‘Daniel Khalife Escaped Because Successive Governments have Starved Prisons of Staff and Money’
Poor conditions and a lack of resources won’t stop the Government blaming staff, writes one former prison officer
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‘Left in the Lurch’: The Systemic Failure and Under-Funding of Respite Care
Government austerity and savage cuts to council funding have decimated respite and short break services
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Mother Fears her Child Becoming the ‘Next Awaab Ishak’ as Damp and Mouldy Home is Left Untreated
Grace Oppong told Byline Times that her daughter has been repeatedly hospitalised due to mould and damp
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Britain’s Best Days are Behind Us Under the Conservatives, Say British People
A majority of voters believe “nothing in Britain really works” and say Rishi Sunak’s party has made public services worse, according to an exclusive new poll
