Category: Blog
Design experiments for local democracy
A #notwestminster and CfGS initiative What is this? #notwestminster brings (or bring, if you consider them to be a plural) people together to create and share new ideas for doing local democracy. You can find out more about it, or them, here . The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny is a charity which does work on […]
Oh we do like to be beside the seaside…
CfGS is at the LGA Conference in Bournemouth There is no doubt we are living through some of the most dramatic political times of a generation. The EU referendum, a prime minister resigning and political infighting amongst the Conservatives and Labour create a colourful back-drop to the Local Government Association Annual Conference in Bournemouth. There […]
Brexit, health and care system planning….and scrutiny?
The referendum result has shifted the ground under what are already a tough set of challenges faced by NHS and social care managers. The health and care system is experiencing some unprecedented pressures – and uncertainty about the impact of Brexit will add to the complexity. Money for the health service (nobody mentioned social care […]
Brexit, devolution… and scrutiny?
Following the referendum result there’s a lot of chatter about the likely impact of the decision on local government and the devolution agenda. If this seems parochial – my God, we should be talking about macroeconomics, the invocation of Article 50 of the TEU and the Labour leadership crisis! – it’s important to recognise […]
Impact and influence: more lessons for local government from select committees
This is the second of three blogposts about scrutiny’s impact. In the first post of this series, I introduced two recent pieces of research carried out into the impact of select committee work – “Selective Influence”, a detailed study published in 2011 by Meg Russell and Meghan Benton at UCL’s Constitution Unit, and a more […]
Governance and Scrutiny MJ Award winner announced
Durham County Council pick up Excellence in Governance and Scrutiny MJ Award At an exciting evening, celebrating some of the great achievements of Local Government, Durham County Council, were presented with the Excellence in Governance and Scrutiny MJ Award, which CfGS sponsored this year, for their commitment to public participation in local decision making. Presented with […]
Scrutinising select committees
This is the first of three blogposts about scrutiny’s impact and how scrutiny might be improved. It anticipates the publication by us at the end of the summer of a revised methodology for local areas to use both to evaluate their existing scrutiny arrangements and to review and design new ones – joint systems and […]
Working on local democracy
Sometimes it’s tempting to think that the phrase “local democracy” is an oxymoron. Lots of it isn’t especially local in nature – so much of what local government can and can’t do being prescribed by government, even with the onset of English devolution. And lots of it doesn’t feel especially democratic either. Most people’s interaction […]
Scrutinising immunisation services – two new guides published
Immunisation is a critical component in the public health armoury. It prevents death and disease and has a significant impact on health services, reducing infections and making hospital stays less likely – especially during critical period of ‘winter pressure’. These two new connected reports, which we are publishing today, will help local areas in scrutinising immunisation services. […]
A devo update: reflections on research from CURDS and NAVCA
May seems to be the month for publishing major reports on devolution. There is our own, launched recently (https://www.cfgs.org.uk/cards-on-the-table-devolution/), there is the imminent paper from Phil Swann of Shared Intelligence, going down into the legal detail of the establishment and operation of combined authority – and in the last week, two major and thought-provoking pieces […]