Against the current backdrop of deteriorating economic and financial conditions, the authors consider recent trends and current prospects for credit unions in Great Britain. Although credit unions have experienced solid membership and asset growth, there are clouds on the horizon. Bad debts and...

<title/> The government has been actively encouraging the development of credit unions to help the financially excluded. However, rather than stimulating credit union development, government grants can erode the community self-help ethos on which credit unions are founded. Policies should be formulated...

As member-owned, not-for-profit financial institutions, credit unions are an important instrument of public policy, particularly in pushing forward measures to tackle financial and social exclusion. Historically, the credit union movement in Great Britain has been hampered by a number of...

This article explores the relative efficiency of Northern Ireland hospitals, and in particular the efficiency of small hospitals relative to their large counterparts, employing a technique called data envelopment analysis. The empirical analysis revealed that larger hospitals displayed higher...

Unparalleled turmoil in the banking system over the past two years has impacted severely on the UK's economic prospects. What was once a profitable, fastgrowing, dynamic and highly innovative banking sector has been publicly humiliated, while its lending capacity has stalled. This article...

This article focuses on a central feature of the former Conservative Government’s approach to the National Health Service (NHS), the introduction of General Practitioner Fundholding. It examines the nature of business planning undertaken by fundholding practices in the North West Region by...