The latest views and opinions from members of the CfGS teams and occasional guest blogs.
Look After Yourselves People I write this blog a few short weeks after World Mental Health Day – a day to advocate for, and signpost to, a greater understanding and ...
It feels like a different world in which the Department formally known as MHCLG published the statutory guidance for councils and combined authorities on the 7th May 2019. For those ...
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion By Annette Aiken & Natalie Rotherham Recent worldwide events and campaigns have shone a light onto the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and intersectionality arenas. Equality, ...
This week we have been thinking about the cost-of-living crisis and the contribution that overview and scrutiny can make to understanding the impact that the crisis is having and will ...
Scrutiny and the cost of living Although the cost of living crisis is dominating political conversation this week – especially in light of the rise of the energy price cap ...
With national politics restarting this week after the Queen’s funeral, there is plenty in the new PM’s inbox – and plenty for those of us in local government to think ...
A bit later in the autumn we will be producing a guide to the drafting and revision of effective council constitutions, funded by the LGA. In carrying out this work ...
Before the pandemic, we and the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) embarked on a project looking at the way that councils (and councillors) engage with electoral reviews. This ...
A few weeks ago we published a paper exploring how scrutiny in local authorities can play an active part in helping councils to learn lessons from the pandemic, and to ...
In March last year (2021) we published the “Governance risk and resilience” – a set of material designed to support people working in councils (and in other parts of the ...
We have now published our annual survey of overview and scrutiny in local government – the definitive picture of scrutiny’s effectiveness in the first year post-pandemic. You can read a ...
The use of surveys to gather and triangulate evidence for scrutiny reviews is easier, now that we can be more confident that a majority of local people have access to ...
Scrutiny has come a long way since its inception in 2000 where a key feature was safeguarding through transparency. The need for transparency has not diminished, but the focus has ...
It’s been a busy summer – although nobody really expects August to be a period of “downtime” any more. We head into the autumn with a new Prime Minister and ...
For the first time on record, temperatures in the UK exceeded 40°C, though this isn’t the only record broken this year; inflation hit a new 40 year high, the energy ...
I had always intended to write a blog reflecting on my first 6-months as Chief Executive at CfGS. However, I must admit to never having been expecting to do ...
NEW GUIDANCE ON CALL-IN Introduction and objectives As part of its work supporting local authority governance, CfGS is planning to produce a short guide on the effective operation of call-in ...
Terrie’s reflections as the Board publishes its second independent annual report As Chair of the Mears Scrutiny Board, I am pleased to report the main findings of our second annual ...
Next week, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will cease to be, and in their place new statutory Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) will come into being – taking responsibility for the design ...
As a former Chief Fire Officer, I was delighted when an invitation arrived from the LGA for me to deliver a series of workshops on good governance at its recent ...