Tom Clarke
Was Lord Smith’s Environment Agency to blame for the floods?
The Environment Agency’s Lord Smith had to face angry citizens during the winter floods. But isn’t that the job of ministers?
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FactCheck: the trouble with ‘troubled families’
More than half a million “troubled families” could get intensive help from the government. But what’s in the small print?
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Alex Thomson
Flooding blame game drowns out vital logic of managed retreat
It is quite natural, right and proper that in the immediacy of what is happening in the UK, from politicians down, it is helping people out with flooded homes that comes top priority.
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Gary Gibbon
Armchair hydrologists go to war
There was talk before the floods that Eric Pickles might be a marked man in the reshuffle expected after the elections in May. It’s hard to imagine he’s helped his chances in the last day or so.
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FactCheck: Government still mired in dubious flood claims
The waves continue to batter Britain and the political storm over the coalition’s flood defence strategy is still raging too. Is this government really spending more than the last?
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FactCheck Q&A: raining on the rumour of a Romanian influx
As anxious MPs consider bad-mouthing Britain to put off low-skilled Romanian and Bulgarian workers from moving to the UK, FactCheck examines the truth behind the scaremongering.
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Michael Crick
Will Donny scrap its elected mayor?
While ten British cities are voting on whether to have an elected mayor, Doncaster, which introduced the post in 2001, is voting on whether to scrap theirs – which suggests the system hasn’t been a great success.
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FactCheck: govt in a pickle over “town hall Pravdas”
The government wants to stop councils producing weekly so-called Town Hall Pravdas to save money and help boost the local press. But FactCheck finds it might not do either.
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FactCheck: is bigger better?
Sharing services could save councils hundreds of thousands of pounds and some are already doing it successfully. But at what point do the drawbacks outweigh the benefits?
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Faisal Islam
Councils axe 100,000 planned homes in England
Faisal Islam writes on how councils in England have scrapped plans to build 100,000 new homes following a change in the planning rules by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.