Category: Blog
Preparing scrutiny for Sustainability and Transformation Plans
“Now is quite obviously the time to confront – not duck – the big local choices needed to improve health and care across England over the next five years, and STPs [Sustainability and Transformation Plans] are a way of doing this. Their success will largely depend on the extent to which local leaders and communities […]
Devolution, local scrutiny and the Public Accounts Committee
The Public Accounts Committee has been interested in the Government’s policies on English devolution for some time now. Earlier this year, they put out a report on accountability and devolution which we critiqued here. It’s safe to say that the PAC view on scrutiny has undertaken something of a pivot since that report. More recently, […]
Democracy, governance and the truth
Democracy, governance and the truth Understanding the past – improving the future A national conference for local government Thursday 1st December 2016Holiday Inn, London, Bloomsbury, WC1N 1HTPrices from £149 + VAT Democracy, governance and the truth. Now that is a conference title! We debated long and hard about this title as the word […]
CfGS is recruiting – Research and Policy Co-ordinator
CfGS is looking for a bright, hardworking and experienced individual to join the team as a permanent Research and Policy Co-ordinator, to start in September 2016. The recruit will provide information and policy support to the Directors and consultants and will also organise high-level roundtables in order to promote the principles of good governance and scrutiny across all […]
Evaluating scrutiny
This is the third in a series of blogposts reflecting on how the work of scrutiny might be evaluated. In the first two posts (here and here), we reflected on recent evaluations of the work of select committees by the Constitution Unit and the Institute for Government. In this post, we’ll develop some of those […]
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 […]