Category: Blog
Leading sector bodies working together to provide practical advice to councils to assist in the strengthening of local governance
A range of national bodies are working together to enhance councils’ understanding of how they can diagnose and reduce the risk of failure in corporate governance, and what success factors can point the way to greater strength in this area. Research is being led by the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny and Localis, and funded […]
Supporting councillors dealing with harassment and intimidation
Scrutiny and democratic services officers are in a unique position in the council – they deal, day to day, with councillors in a way that most officers don’t. Within the council, we are used to deferring to, and working closely alongside, members. For those of us who have worked our entire careers in democratic services […]
2019 annual survey of overview and scrutiny in local government now open
2020 will mark the 20th anniversary of the legislative changes that led to the establishment of the overview and scrutiny function in English and Welsh councils. In the runup to this momentous event we want to have – and we want you to have – the fullest possible picture of scrutiny across the country. Notable […]
Engaging with the climate emergency
We’re hoping to do some work in the coming months on how scrutiny can engage with the climate emergency – engaging with the global challenge to understand the practical local action that can be undertaken to both mitigate and adapt to the crisis. The next meeting of our Advisory Board is devoted to the subject, […]
Health scrutiny and “integrated care systems”
If you are at an county or unitary council then structural change in the English NHS won’t have been far from your mind for much of the last decade. It seems as if there is a near constant round of local variations to health services, accompanied by nationally-led alterations – leading from the establishment of […]
Guest Blog from David Evans, Founder, The Campaign Company: The Trust Challenge
On EU Referendum Day three years ago, a conspiracy theory went viral. It was based on the idea that election officials would rub out votes if they were in pencil. Popularised by the #UseAPen hashtag, ‘Pencil-Gate’ occupied the afternoon of 23 June 2016 – with publicly-minded voters even turning up at polling stations with spare […]
Return to return to the committee system
It’s time to come back to a topic beloved of local authority governance enthusiasts – the committee system. A quick primer for those who were not working in the sector – or who, indeed, may not have been born – when the Local Government Act 2000 came into force, bringing into existence the governance systems […]
Some critical, urgent learning from recent CQC reports
The Counties and Unitaries Scrutiny Network at its meeting earlier this month (June 2019) took information from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on some of the key issues arising from recent inspection reports (largely published between March and May 2019). I thought that there would be wider interest in these reports – they speak to […]
In discussions about ‘systems’ and ‘places’, where does scrutiny and assurance fit in?
In the run up to our annual health scrutiny and assurance conference being held on 18th July at the King’s Fund, I’ve been reflecting on the important role that people with scrutiny and assurance roles can play. Earlier this year, jointly with NHS Clinical Commissioners, we published ‘Governance and Accountability for Integrated Health and Care’. […]
Dealing with complaints at scrutiny
For a long time, scrutiny professionals and councillors alike were clear that scrutiny was not a place for individual complaints for local people to be aired. Scrutiny is about strategic issues – high level stuff – and the use of high quality data is the only way to understand those issues. Tempering that work by […]