Category: News
Housing, scrutiny and the Housing Revenue Account (HRA)
We are really pleased to have published an LGA-funded piece of research on the scrutiny of housing. It looked across the piece at social housing, private rental, planning and redevelopment, and homelessness. These four issues come with some policy levers for local politicians – policy levers over which we think scrutiny ought to have oversight. […]
Scrutiny and local journalism
It used to be the case that local journalists were not interested in council meetings, and certainly not scrutiny meetings. Thinking back ten or even five years, the level of press interest in council business was minimal. Major council decisions have still been covered (often idiosyncratically) but the hollowing out of the local press – […]
Scrutiny as a mindset
I had an interesting conversation on Twitter (inevitably) recently which got me to thinking about how we conceive of scrutiny – what it’s for and how we think about it. Forgive me for the navel-gazing, but we are engaged in helping the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as they draft the new […]
Current range of CfGS training and consultancy services
If you are interested in any of our training sessions but our scheduled courses don’t fit your availability, please get in touch to discuss how we can design a course to suit your council. Generally for larger groups it makes sense for us to deliver in-house at your organisation, which also means we can focus […]
National Health Scrutiny and Assurance Conference – 14th September 2018
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. With more than 100 attendees the event saw a range of high profile national speakers and an opportunity for delegates from […]
Managing performance and the “thermocline of truth”
Fellow train nerds will have been watching with interest the ongoing debacle that is the year-long delay to the £15 billion Crossrail project in London. This new east-west railway should be opening this December, but the announcement came a few days ago that this would be delayed by a full year. Those working in local […]
CfGS report on scrutiny improvements for Northamptonshire County Council
The CfGS report on scrutiny improvements for Northamptonshire County Council has been published and was approved by the Council meeting at its meeting 20th September 2018. Click here to read the report. CfGS is now working with the county council to support the implementation of our recommendations. For more information please contact Ian Parry on ian.parry@cfgs.org.uk […]
Local Government financial governance and scrutiny – passing the robustness test?
This week will see even more talk of the financial challenges facing councils, if that’s actually possible. Looking at CfGS activities for the week, we’re talking financial resilience at the LGC Summit, it’s the inaugural CIPFA CfGS Councillor Conference and at our national health scrutiny and assurance conference on Friday we expect finance talk to […]
#scrutinysuccess
On 4th December, the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny will host its annual local government scrutiny conference in London where around 150 scrutiny practitioners will gather to focus on this year’s theme of ‘Strategies for Success’. At the event we would like to showcase examples of scrutiny work that you are most proud of. To […]
Government guidance on overview and scrutiny to be published in December
(EDIT, September 2018: We have now published more information about the overview and scrutiny guidance, which you can find here) We are working with MHCLG to produce guidance on the operation of local authority overview and scrutiny, which we expect will be published during December. This guidance follows the Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s […]