Do councils really understand risk?

Posted on 03/05/2016 by Ed Hammond | governance and scrutiny, risk

With which of these statements about risk do you agree?“Councils are risk averse.”“Councils are cautious and prudent.”Give up?Of course, this is a ludicrous question. It all comes down to how you use language around risk – how you understand it, how you tackle it, how you mitigate it. More than anything, it comes down to perspective too. The perspective of what risk is, what “risk-taking” is, and how subjective some of these issues can really be.I am midway through writing a paper on this – a companion-piece to a similar paper produced a little earlier this ...