Category: News
Resources for finance scrutiny
Resources for finance scrutiny We think that scrutiny of council finances (and of budget development) should be year-round – a continued, sustained conversation between scrutiny and the executive. In fact, I’ve blogged about it before. However, we recognise that for many, budget scrutiny is something that involves activity clustering around the back end of the […]
An update on the scrutiny guidance
An update on the scrutiny guidance I wanted to share an update with you on our, and MHCLG’s, progress on the drafting of the scrutiny guidance. We have now completed the draft of the sections that MHCLG asked us to write, and I’m waiting for them to send the latest draft back to me so […]
Elected chairs for scrutiny
One of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s recommendations on overview and scrutiny last year was that we should pilot arrangements for the election of overview and scrutiny chairs. The Committee was intrigued by the idea of bringing in a secret ballot for chair elections – presumably because of the positive experience of these […]
To pick or not to pick: A question of work planning
Last month the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CfGS) was consulting on proposals for new statutory guidance on overview and scrutiny in local government. The eagerly awaited Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) text is due to be published in December 2018, and local authorities are required to ‘have regard to’ it’s content. […]
To pick or not to pick: A question of work planning
Last month the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CfGS) was consulting on proposals for new statutory guidance on overview and scrutiny in local government. The eagerly awaited Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) text is due to be published in December 2018, and local authorities are required to ‘have regard to’ it’s content. […]
ENGIE Scrutiny Board
Energy and services business, ENGIE UK is leading the way in its commitment to operate at the highest economic, social and environmental standards. In-line with the company’s belief in responsibilities that go beyond traditional business drivers, ENGIE wanted to develop a new Responsible Business Charter to evaluate its work in this area and examine what […]
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 […]