6032posts
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DVSA’s youngest driving examiner breaks the mould in her new role
Emily Butler became DVSA’s youngest car driving examiner aged 23 when she started her role in Hartlepool last year.
Emily shares her experience of why she became an examiner, what the training was like and how she’s getting to grips with her new role.
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Understanding and improving farming regulation
Some farming and land management activities are regulated to safeguard our environment and to protect the health of animals, plants and people. We do this through around 150 pieces of legislation, comprising primary and secondary legislation. All of this legislation applies to agricultural activity, and collectively constitutes what is known as the ‘regulatory baseline for agriculture’. This is a complex legislative picture and is not easy to navigate – we intend to improve and evolve this baseline in future as part of our agricultural transition outside of the European Union (EU).
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I was always a computer nerd! In conversation with Gina Gill
Gina Gill, MoJ’s Chief Digital & Information Officer was recently featured in the internal Gender Equality Newsletter. Gina talks about her journey as a woman in tech, biases she has faced along the way, and lessons for women joining the …
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Reform and Modernisation Champions - Creating the Northwest Network
Join our new Modernisation and Reform Network in the North West. First meeting 16 March 2022
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New inspection framework for lead providers of the early career framework and national professional qualifications
Chris Russell, our National Director for Education, discusses this new area of our work. Today, we have published our new framework and handbook for inspecting lead providers of the early career framework (ECF) and the reformed suite of national professional …
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How GDS’s design recruitment process works
In this blog post, we give an overview of the design recruitment process and what to expect once you’ve applied for a job.
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Making space for nature – to benefit water
Find out more about how planting trees can help to improve water quality and provide natural flood management on your land.
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Podcast: Improving navigation on GOV.UK
When was the last time you noticed any changes to GOV.UK? We share how and why we’ve updated its homepage and menu bars.
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Setting up an Accessibility Book Club
Interested in running an Accessibility Book club? Read about one at the Ministry of Justice Digital and Technology, with accompanying resources to help you get started.
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How we created a new security training course for the Civil Service
Bob Mistry and Tony Green, from the Defra security team, share their experiences of working with partners throughout the organisation to develop a new online security training course that will be used by hundreds of thousands of civil servants across government departments in the future.
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Diversity leads to better decision-making
The Government Security Function’s mission is to defend the UK government from security threats whilst protecting the public. To do this effectively, they’re driving up diversity of thought in every area of their work. The Government Security Function is made …
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Working together to avoid delays to probate applications
Stopped probate applications can take more than double the amount of administrative time to issue compared to those we can issue on our first attempt. We could increase the number of grants issued by over 50,000 each year for practitioners if we work together to reduce the number of stopped applications.
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The Farming Innovation Programme in 2022
In October, we launched the first rounds of funding in our Farming Innovation Programme. As we've been processing the applications, we've seen a promising spread of ideas across the livestock, horticulture and broadacre sub-sectors. These ideas are coming in from across the whole of England. In this post, I'll share next steps and what to look out for this year.
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What you need to know about secondary school offer day
On Tuesday 1 March year 6 pupils across the country will find out which secondary school has offered them a place for September 2022.
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Great new workspaces for DWP Digital
Take a look at our new test and learn workspace in Newcastle.
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Unexpected notifiable disease confirmed in Somerset
Whilst the current avian influenza outbreaks make all the headlines, let us turn our attention to a disease that hardly anyone expected anymore: bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
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Future Farming Podcast: Government-funded innovation
In the seventh episode of the Future Farming podcast, Tim Mordan, Defra’s Head of Farming Innovation, Productivity and Science talks to Rui Andrês, CEO of Fieldwork Robotics, about their innovative raspberry robot picker.
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Living with an eating disorder
Eating Disorders Awareness Week (28 February - 6 March) helps fight misunderstandings over anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and other eating disorders. It also highlights the importance of receiving professional help early. Below, Martin Riley shares his experiences. I can’t pinpoint …
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Help for teachers and families to talk to pupils about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how to help them avoid misinformation.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is distressing and concerning, and we understand children and young people may have questions or be seeking reassurance. We know that schools are well placed to talk to pupils about the images they are seeing and …
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Factsheet: Home Office action on Ukraine
This factsheet is no longer being updated. Please read Home Office visa support for Ukrainians factsheet for the latest information. Russia’s assault on Ukraine is an unprovoked, premeditated attack against a sovereign democratic state. President Putin has chosen a path …
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COVID-19: Moving towards recovery for schools, colleges and universities
The COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions it has made necessary have had a significant impact on the education, health and social development of our children and young people.
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Tony Juniper reappointed as Natural England Chair
Today we are looking at a media interview on Tony Juniper’s recent reappointment as Natural England chair. There is positive coverage today in the Guardian following Tony Juniper’s recent reappointment as Chair of Natural England. Tony Juniper was interviewed on …
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Health and social care integration: local perspectives
"‘Joining up care for people, places and populations’ is not just the title of the Government’s Integration White Paper, but an aspiration for us all" says Paul Najsarek of Solace, the membership network for public sector and local government professionals. He believes local expertise can deliver local solutions, as he explains in his debut blog for this site...
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Charities Bill: the next steps
This week the Charities Bill received Royal Assent and passed into law as the Charities Act 2022. This blog covers what happens next, and the key changes charities can expect.
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Incident report: increased error rate on GOV.UK on 5 January 2022
On 5 January 2022, some GOV.UK users saw errors when accessing the site. Here’s what happened and how we responded.
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Dragons' Den, Episode 8, Series 19
Handmade sip-from-the-jar apple and nut-based liqueurs and watch straps made from pineapple. These are just some of the exciting innovations seen on Dragons’ Den this week – but did the entrepreneurs’ pitches bear fruit? Read our blog to find out more!
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Media factsheet: Hong Kong BN(O) Visa route
On 31 January 2021, the UK launched a bespoke immigration route for British National (Overseas) (BN(O)) status holders and their family members. The route reflects the UK’s historic and moral commitment to those people of Hong Kong who chose to retain their ties …
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'Your profile' on the Content Hub
Research found people in prison need easy access to their timetable, account balances, incentive level, and when their next visit is - this is how we fulfilled those needs and why. The Content Hub is a platform available to people …
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MHRA Good Practice Symposia Week (7 to 11 March 2022)
From Monday 7 to Friday 11 March 2022, the MHRA will be hosting a week-long series of events as part of the Good Practice Symposia Week. The week will include individual events from GCP, GLP and GPvP Inspectorates. Due to …
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Managing Together – discover what it’s like to be one of HMRC’s 13,000+ managers
Within our organisation, people managers have a critical role, from helping to deliver essential services, to enhancing the employee experience of their teams. To support our managers in doing their roles effectively, we have developed the ‘5 Core Functions of …
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Get the facts about student loan reform
We have announced a radical shake up of the higher education system. Under our proposed new measures, our world-leading higher education sector will aim to deliver the highest quality education for all students while providing even better employment prospects. At …
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Rural Payments Agency Launches a New Podcast
The Rural Payments Agency has launched its first ever podcast! We will be publishing a series of podcasts throughout 2022 to help farmers, landowners, and rural communities keep up-to-date with the latest news and announcements from RPA. The RPA Podcast …
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The RPA Podcast: Episode 1 Transcript
James: Hello and welcome to the Rural Payments Agency’s first ever podcast. I’m James Ryan and during 2022 we’ll be bringing you a series of short podcasts to help farmers, landowners and rural communities keep up-to-date on developments at the …
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How we’re improving the Service Manual’s guidance and navigation
The Service Manual team shares how they worked with cross-government communities of practice on guidance and used a design sprint to improve navigation.
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Making a service map ...in a policy department
Alice Whitehead writes about how the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities produced created a service map.
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COVID-19: Simple and effective ways to protect yourself and others
We know the pandemic is not over, so it’s important we continue to take simple and effective actions that will protect our families and communities, particularly those at the greatest risk of severe illness.
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CMA secures final Privacy Sandbox commitments from Google
The CMA accepted Google's commitments to address competition concerns over its Privacy Sandbox proposals, but it's important we get this right. If you have views on our approach to both monitor and assess the effectiveness of the proposals, we want to hear from you.
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Finding policies that work
The Evaluation Task Force has launched a £15 million fund to accelerate evaluation activity across government to improve our understanding of what works and inform better decisions. There is growing enthusiasm for improving evaluation practice across government. In a 2019, …
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LGBT+ History Month: embrace diversity
Inclusion, acceptance and respect are all essential qualities in the world of social care, as much for those who provide services as they are for those who receive them. Deborah Sturdy, Chief Nurse for Adult Social Care, believes LGBT+ History Month is the perfect opportunity to celebrate diversity across the care sector.
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LGBT+ History Month: reflections on progress
Chief Social Worker for Adults, Lyn Romeo, has witnessed unprecedented changes in LGBT+ rights over her years as a social worker. Whilst there is still much to do, as we celebrate diversity through the ages during LGBT+ History Month, Lyn reflects on how far we have come as a society.