Category: Blog
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 […]
Culture, governance and collaboration
What is culture? How does political and organisational culture influence governance – and vice versa? And what does this mean for local government? By “culture”, we mean the shared attitudes, behaviours and values that define how organisations work. “Organisational culture” is a familiar concept – it can be a barrier or enabler when organisations try […]
Scrutiny statutory guidance published
The statutory guidance on overview and scrutiny in local government has now been published by MHCLG.This guidance has been produced following a commitment that Government made in early 2018, following on from the Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry into O&S. We participated in the drafting process – producing material to support MHCLG in […]
Guest blog by Rob Whiteman, CIPFA CEO: The Future of Financial Resilience in the Public Sector
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama If you were to go by the headlines that have dominated the news for the past decade, the […]
Public services and the “community paradigm”
One week in February held the publication of two different think tank reports, with two very different visions of the future for the sector and interesting to compare their takes on how we should be adapting our systems to meet future demands. The first report is “Spending fairly, spending well: time for a radical overhaul […]
Brexit: what’s happening?
The short answer to this question is, of course, “nobody knows”. As I write this a further “meaningful vote” on the Withdrawal Agreement is scheduled for 14 February. A win for the Government – both in Parliament and then in securing EU amendments to the WA – still seems a remote prospect. A defeat seems […]
NAO report on local governance: the CfGS view
On 15 January the NAO published their report on local governance – the systems in place and the ability of local governance to be effective in the context of the need to deliver services that are “value for money”. The NAO’s focus is, and always has been, on finances and VfM – its work in […]