News & events

A lot of councils fairly regularly conduct reviews of their constitution. Your council may be one of them. You might do them in-house (your Monitoring...

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many councils were engaged in serious conversations about how they needed to rethink local democracy and local governance. For...

It’s impossible to look across the Atlantic and experience anything but horror at the unfolding protests – and the police violence accompanying them. Seeing...

Free scrutiny webinars focussing on key areas of the COVID-19 crisis As scrutiny committees are now operating through virtual means, we need to think about...

Whilst our recent content has focused on COVID-19 and the associated fallout, I thought this lockdown side-project of mine might serve as a welcome...

Remote meetings are now up and running everywhere; scrutiny meetings are beginning again in many places and council AGMs are taking place too. It’s...

A year ago – it seems much longer – Government finally published the long-awaited statutory guidance on overview and scrutiny in local government. We...

Guest post from Councillor Mary Jones, Swansea Council We are delighted to share the experience of our first remote scrutiny meeting at Swansea Council, which...

We have recently recorded our 'Online Scrutiny Meetings for Councillors' webinar for you to watch below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aEJVtIBs4Y We will also be uploading recorded webinars for members...

Should we begin to get worried that nine weeks since the lock-down started and seven weeks since the Coronavirus Act offered councils the means...

A few people in the sector noted with raised eyebrows that Government chose last week to publish a paper setting out its approach to future...

Guest post from Councillor Philip Broadhead, BCP Council If we had tried to imagine only 6-7 weeks ago how very different the world would look...

One of many emerging risks arising from the COVID-19 crisis is that of council finances.   This is not as immediate and high profile as the...

The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny provides a helpdesk service on matters relating to governance and scrutiny. We are available on the phone, by e-mail...

Our training and development offer is changing in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. You can find out more about our overall offer here.   From now until September we...

The Local Authorities and Police and Crime Panels (Coronavirus) (Flexibility of Local Authority and Police and Crime Panel Meetings) (England and Wales) (Regulations) 2020 have now been published.   They come...

UPDATE: since this post was published, Regulations on remote meetings have been published, and we have published a more detailed guide on scrutiny during...

One of the aspects of the Coronavirus Act which has caused most concern has been the loosening of local authorities’ legal obligations in the...