Category: News
Governance and accountability: ICSs and LGR
In this guest blog, Mark Sandford, a senior research analyst at the House of Commons Library, delves into the implications for local accountability through reorganisation and the Health and Care Bill. When institutional reforms take effect in the UK, governance, accountability and scrutiny are accustomed to being the afterthought. Often, accountability is thought of in […]
Constructive scrutiny: What does it look like in practice?
In this guest blog, Dr Dave McKenna, a CfGS associate and local government practitioner, draws together his insights on how to get the balance right in providing effective challenge. I’ve observed a few scrutiny committees in my time, for fun, obviously, but also for the occasional governance review. For these formal observations I’m looking for […]
Performative aspects of scrutiny
In this guest blog Cllr Bryony Rudkin, deputy leader at Ipswich Borough Council, reflects on the importance of behaviours in how local councillors enact democracy and scrutiny. “Read the standing orders, read them and understand them!” At bit like the moon landings, Berlin Wall or England beating Colombia in that penalty shoot out, take your […]
Local and national scrutiny: challenges in common
In this guest blog Mark Sandford, senior research analyst at the House of Commons Library, takes a comparative look at scrutiny on a national and local level. The Municipal Journal published an article on 1 July 2021, from a former head of communications of the London Assembly, calling for its abolition. This was advocated on […]
Lessons from scrutiny improvement reviews
In 2018, CfGS carried out its first evaluations of local authority scrutiny functions using a new method, and under a new title. We brought together our wealth of research, policy and practical experience and developed the “scrutiny improvement review” (SIR) as a consistent and comprehensive way to evaluate scrutiny arrangements, to diagnose problems and to […]
Post-pandemic recovery: the importance of debriefing
We are currently drawing together evidence to support some guidance for councils on how they can use scrutiny to look back on their experiences during the pandemic – as well as to look forward to today and tomorrow’s new policy challenges. Both tasks will involve fundamentally new ways of working for scrutiny. Scrutiny has reflected […]
Scrutiny, governance and “levelling up”
Perhaps surprisingly, the Prime Minister’s speech on “levelling up” last week provided less, rather than more, certainty about what the Government flagpole policy agenda actually means for local councils and the communities they serve. A helpful intervention from Robert Jenrick served to anchor some of the changes in the context of the devolution agenda, but […]
An update on the Health and Care Bill
Happening parallel with England’s run of success at the Euros (and ongoing covid rolling news), the introduction into the Commons of the long-awaited Health and Care Bill received less media coverage than it perhaps ought to have done. Here is the second fundamental reorganisation of the NHS in less than a decade – at once […]
Bolstering governance
This week (w/c 5 July 2021), we are starting work to highlight the need for councils to support and bolster their commitments to good governance, as we continue to emerge from the pandemic. The pandemic has been exceptionally tough. Restrictions are being removed in the coming weeks but we are far from through this emergency. […]
2021 annual survey: main findings
Our annual survey of overview and scrutiny in local government is published today (7 July). It’s been the first opportunity to fully assess the impact of the pandemic on councils’ scrutiny functions, and to think about the role that scrutiny might play as we set about the task of recovery. Councils’ approaches on, and successes […]