Category: Blog
Under the spotlight – Dudley Council’s Covid-19 scrutiny process
In this guest blog, Kevin O’Keefe and Steve Griffiths (respectively Dudley Council’s Chief Executive and Democratic Services Manager) explain the council’s approach to scrutiny during the pandemic. At the start of lockdown in March, the Council recognised the key importance of maintaining proper levels of openness, transparency, democratic oversight and scrutiny during the Pandemic. […]
Conduct, civility and the Nolan Principles
Last week was officially Anti-Bullying Week. It was good to have a real-life example of the issues and dynamics involved in victimisation and harassment, in the form of the independent report into bullying alleged to have been carried out by the Home Secretary. It makes it a good time to reflect on whether there are […]
Scrutiny during the pandemic: Monmouthshire Council
In this guest blog, Robert McGowan, Policy and Scrutiny Officer at Monmouthshire Council, writes for us on practical experiences in carrying out vital scrutiny work on a topic of local importance during 2020. In March, when the first lockdown began, scrutiny came to an immediate halt. Given the organisation’s existing policy of flexible and home […]
Avoiding the risk of overload: focusing on business critical issues
For most scrutineers, the pace does not seem to have let up since March. Over the spring and summer scrutiny was constrained in the amount of formal work it could do – but that didn’t mean that nothing was happening. Now, the pressure is even more significant. For many councils a full suite of committee […]
Scrutiny of councils’ commercial activity – guidance and support reminder
You can’t have failed to notice that controversy around councils’ commercial activity has been in the news recently. Some councils have found themselves unexpectedly exposed to significant risk around their investments – caused in part by the impact of the pandemic, but partly by longer-standing issues. It’s generally accepted that councillor oversight of commercial activity […]
“Accountability Works!”: ten years on
In 2010, shortly before the General Election, the Centre for Public Scrutiny (as we then were) published “Accountability Works!” – a document which aimed to provide a comprehensive expression of what accountability and democracy looked like in public services at the turn of a new decade. We had planned, this year, to do a little […]
“Docking-in”: making traditional governance fit for purpose in a hyper-localist world
More councils are starting to experiment with different forms of decision-making. The emergence of mutual aid networks at the outset of the pandemics – agile, highly local, groups of neighbours getting together at street level to offer immediate help to the vulnerable – contrasts unfavourably with the lumbering setup of the national, NHS-led volunteering scheme. […]
Basic principles of governance for the post-COVID world
In a previous post, we set out four possible scenarios for how governance could develop as we continue to navigate the pandemic. Since then, we have been successful in securing funding for a major campaign on post-COVID governance. This post explores our initial thinking on this issue – inviting comment as we seek to turn […]
Our campaigning work around local governance in the post-COVID world
CfGS has been successful in securing funding to support a major campaign on local governance in the post-COVID world, and what steps could be taken to shift governance approaches to make the public sector, at a local level, more responsive to citizens. This work is running between now and September 2021. Our work will challenge […]
Building strong tenant involvement for housing associations
As the National Housing Federation’s Together with Tenants initiative is rolled out nationally this month, many housing associations will be taking a comprehensive look at their governance frameworks to ensure that they are applying best practice and are fully compliant with the principles of the TwT charter. Together with Tenants is designed to bring […]