Category: News
Health Scrutiny and Assurance Conference 2019
The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, in partnership with the NHS, hosted a well attended and engaging national conference focusing on the most important issues facing scrutiny and assurance in health and social care. The event saw a range of high profile national speakers and an opportunity for delegates from local government and the NHS […]
Guest Blog from David Evans, Founder, The Campaign Company: The Trust Challenge
On EU Referendum Day three years ago, a conspiracy theory went viral. It was based on the idea that election officials would rub out votes if they were in pencil. Popularised by the #UseAPen hashtag, ‘Pencil-Gate’ occupied the afternoon of 23 June 2016 – with publicly-minded voters even turning up at polling stations with spare […]
Return to return to the committee system
It’s time to come back to a topic beloved of local authority governance enthusiasts – the committee system. A quick primer for those who were not working in the sector – or who, indeed, may not have been born – when the Local Government Act 2000 came into force, bringing into existence the governance systems […]
Delivery Manager – secondment opportunity or fixed term contract for 6 months
We are recruiting to the post of Delivery Manager who will lead on our event and research programmes, as well as contribute to business development and consultancy. Ideally you have a good understanding of scrutiny and governance from recent work experience. More importantly you will have excellent research, project and event management skills and an […]
Some critical, urgent learning from recent CQC reports
The Counties and Unitaries Scrutiny Network at its meeting earlier this month (June 2019) took information from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on some of the key issues arising from recent inspection reports (largely published between March and May 2019). I thought that there would be wider interest in these reports – they speak to […]
Dealing with complaints at scrutiny
For a long time, scrutiny professionals and councillors alike were clear that scrutiny was not a place for individual complaints for local people to be aired. Scrutiny is about strategic issues – high level stuff – and the use of high quality data is the only way to understand those issues. Tempering that work by […]
Culture, governance and collaboration
What is culture? How does political and organisational culture influence governance – and vice versa? And what does this mean for local government? By “culture”, we mean the shared attitudes, behaviours and values that define how organisations work. “Organisational culture” is a familiar concept – it can be a barrier or enabler when organisations try […]
Government Scrutiny Guidance Symposium – 20th June, London – book now
On 20th June CfGS will be holding a symposium to discuss the Government’s new statutory guidance on overview and scrutiny. The first general Government guidance on scrutiny since 2006, it provides a vital opportunity for practitioners to reflect on current practice and to talk to their peers about how scrutiny will move into its third […]
Scrutiny statutory guidance published
The statutory guidance on overview and scrutiny in local government has now been published by MHCLG.This guidance has been produced following a commitment that Government made in early 2018, following on from the Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry into O&S. We participated in the drafting process – producing material to support MHCLG in […]
Guest blog by Rob Whiteman, CIPFA CEO: The Future of Financial Resilience in the Public Sector
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama If you were to go by the headlines that have dominated the news for the past decade, the […]