Recently in Public Services Category

The inquest which was conducted into the death of singer Amy Winehouse has been called into doubt after it emerged that the coroner in the case may not have had the necessary experience to oversee the case.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, has now referred the matter to the Office for Judicial Complaints for a review.

Amy Winehouse was just 27 when she was found dead in her North London flat. She was widely known to have been battling addictions to alcohol and drugs for many years but her death came as a surprise to many who felt that she had turned a corner.

Last week the Education Act 2011 was granted Royal Assent. The new legislation covers many different aspects of education from discipline to post-16 education, teacher training and the closing and opening of schools.

The Education Secretary now has the power to close down a school that is perceived to be failing without having to consult with local authorities first. This power, says the National Association of Schoolmasters/ Union of Women Teachers, is a "crime against humanity, a smash and grab raid that will tear apart our communities".

Patrick Roach, deputy general secretary of the NASUWT, said: "We must not fall into traps that have been set for us. We need to reclaim progressive values within our schools and classrooms."

London's Metropolitan police have acquired technology which allows them to intercept mobile phone calls and SMS messages, switch off phones remotely and gather data about users in a target area.

The technology, created by UK company Datong, creates fake mobile networks and tricks mobile phones within a 10 square kilometre radius into using it. The surveillance system is then able to spy on the phone's communications and access the phone's identification numbers, IMEI and IMSI, which give away the user's location and can be used to shut down the phone.

One positive use of this technology is to enable law enforcers to locate and shut down a mobile phone that may be used as a trigger for a bomb.

A London police officer has been sacked following a series of mishandled calls to the 999 emergency number, resulting in rape victims, assaults and other serious crimes not being dealt with immediately.

Between May and July in 2009, the 58-year-old police officer based at Bow Central Command Centre was rude and condescending to callers and he dismissed calls reporting crimes such as domestic violence and a potential armed break-in, failing to alert other police officers.

He also falsely recorded phone numbers of callers by changing the last digit so that his superiors would not discover his negligence.

In a recent interview with The Times newspaper, Sir Chris Woodward, former Ofsted chief inspector, claimed that children should be allowed to leave school aged 14.

He believes that children who are less academically-minded would be better off being allowed to learn a trade and taking up vocational apprenticeships rather than being forced to study maths and English up to the age of 18.

He said: "If a child at 14 has mastered basic literacy and numeracy, I would be very happy for that child to leave school and go into a combination of apprenticeship and further education training and a practical, hands-on, craft-based training that takes them through into a job."

Conservative think-tank Policy Exchange has produced a report on the costs involved in running the police force and found that £150 million a year is wasted on officers carrying out jobs that could easily be fulfilled by civilians.

The report, the Cost of the Cops, said that uniformed officers are spending too much time "hidden away in back offices", working in control rooms and forensic suites instead of out on the streets policing.

The report highlighted figures which showed that some 14,500 officers did not make any arrests last year and in Derbyshire almost half of their officers made no arrests at all.

Government cuts have meant that councils across the country are planning to close down public libraries, much to the indignation of many concerned readers and writers.

But campaigners have achieved some success recently in Somerset, where a judge has granted an injunction to postpone the closure of libraries until at least September.

In September there will be a full judicial review to decide the fate of 11 libraries in Somerset from which the council plan to withdraw funding.