The latest governance and scrutiny news, opinions, research and updates.
To empower or intimidate? When I started my secondment with CfGS I didn’t anticipate the fascination I would develop with council chambers. They really are the most enchanting spaces, each ...
Recently our colleague Camilla de Bernhardt-Lane wrote to scrutiny practitioners asking how Council invite public participation in formal committees, to support some thinking she was doing to support a review ...
Working in local government is unlike any other organisation and working in democratic services and scrutiny is unlike any part of local government! It’s a balancing act between providing support ...
Hot off the heels of our own Annual Conference in mid-June, CfGS then attended the LGA Conference 2023 in early July, joined by our colleagues the Association of Democratic Service ...
With the local elections having recently taken place, many council officers are thinking about putting together a structured training and development programme for their newly or returning elected members and ...
Next year we celebrate our 50th anniversary. That’s nearly half a century investigating complaints about councils. Each year we investigate thousands of cases, many shining a valuable light on people’s ...
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 ...
Somerset West and Taunton Council declared a climate emergency in 2019 (motion proposed by Cllr Mansell) and adopted a Corporate Strategy with a priority theme on Our Environment and Economy ...
Please follow the link below for the updated CfGS Annual Conference Agenda. The Chair and Panel profiles can be found here: Panellist and Chair Profiles for the upcoming CfGS ...
This is the last of these updates I’ll produce – after nine months as Acting Chief Executive I will, on 2 May, be welcoming our new CEO Mel Stevens to ...
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 ...
On 4th April, the final report of the Hewitt Review was published. This review, commissioned by Government, was carried out by former health minister Patricia Hewitt, looking at the operation ...
Following a request put forward by a Councillor, in June 2022 the City Council established a cross party Homelessness Task and Finish Working Group, chaired by the Deputy Chair of ...
Please find below the profiles of our panellists and chair for the panel at our upcoming conference. The conference is titled ‘Governance and scrutiny fit for the future’ – building ...
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 ...
This is a roundtable event to explore the changes to Inspecting local authority children’s services (ILACS) and how Scrutiny can meaningfully add value to the process: Inspecting local authority children’s ...
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 ...