The latest views and opinions from members of the CfGS teams and occasional guest blogs.
As you may be aware, we recently held our Annual Conference at the King’s Fund in London! Now that the dust has settled, we have drafted this blog to recap ...
ADSO, CfGS, LLG (the good governance hub) are in attendance at the LGA Conference 2023, stand T9. Join us to explore: • Learnings from best practice and poor practice ...
Nearly every year since 2004 CfGS has carried out an annual scrutiny survey. The intention of the exercise is to understand not only how scrutiny is carried out, but how ...
Not the most encouraging of phrases is it, really? But true in part. As we approach the elections, and the first that requires voter ID, it is reasonable ...
An Ofsted monitoring visit letter to Devon in July 2021 stated that the “quality and effectiveness of scrutiny and critical challenge provided by elected members and the corporate centre are ...
Local Public Accounts Committees – You Heard It Here First It’s been a few weeks since the publication of the Labour Party’s ‘A New Britain: Renewing our democracy and rebuilding ...
This post represents a “first look” at the just-published of the English Devolution Accountability Framework – the early thoughts of our Acting Chief Executive rather than, for the moment, the ...
For Councils, May is a time of change. It’s when Annual General Meetings are held and changes in positions among council members, or important changes to constitutions tend to happen. ...
CfGS is currently (February 2023) reviewing its material on the committee system. In light of this activity, some of our thinking on how councils approach committee system operations, and governance ...
This week (on 26 January) Lisa Nandy MP announced that the establishment of local Public Accounts Committees would form part of a new approach that the Labour Party would take ...
Over the past few months we have been working to better understand how the arrangements for scrutiny of health and care services will be changed by the 2022 Act. In ...
2023 is going to be an exciting year for CfGS. Firstly, we’ve just opened bookings for our Annual Conference, now back in its old timeslot of mid-June. This is a ...
Happy New Year! 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny. We were set up by the Local Government Association, the Local Government ...
May seems an awfully long way away, but both councillors and officers will already be gearing up for the local elections. Depressingly, local polls are often seen as providing a ...
One of the benefits of scrutiny work is in being able to examine and report authoritatively on the issues which most affect people in their everyday lives. Being at the ...
Managing Finances in a Crazy World Prices rise at their fastest rate for 40 years - inflation already over 11% this year. Bank of England increased interest rates to 3% Energy ...
Improving Scrutiny: From the perspective of a new Democratic Services Officer When I started my role as a Democratic Services Officer, in the April of this year, I was ...
One Coventry Response to Supporting Our Communities with the Cost of Living Crisis – Scrutiny Co-ordination Committee, a blog by Gennie Holmes, Scrutiny Co-ordinator at Coventry City Council Members of ...
Chief executive’s update: W/C 25 November 2022 With apologies for the slight delay since I last wrote to update you on CfGS’s work, here’s some information about what’s coming up ...
As practitioners, we are always keen to develop and improve scrutiny here at Essex County Council, whilst also being mindful to ensure that we remain Member-led. We were, then, really ...