Standards need to get back to basics all over again
Originally published in the Local Government Chronicle [26/02/25]
This year we are marking the thirtieth anniversary of the introduction of the seven Nolan principles in public life. The origin to all this was the wave of increasingly frenzied series of red top newspaper stories ferreting out incidence of ‘sleaze’ – of the cash in brown paper envelope and bizarre bed hopping varieties – among Conservative MPs, that followed with delicious theatrical irony, in the wake of hapless prime minister John Major’s call for the nation to return to ‘back to basics’ morality.
In an effort to stop the rot, Lord Nolan was commissioned and from the publication of his groundbreaking review in 1995, the ethical foundations of modern public leadership were set in place in summary: selflessness; integrity; objectivity; accountability; openness; honesty and leadership.
In the intervening three decades, after the 1997 Labour landslide we saw the creation of the Standards Board for England (SBE) which oversaw the code of conduct for elected members as part of the Blairite modernizing local government agenda. In 2010, when Lord Pickles was the ‘fat man in a hurry’, and having taken his axe to the Audit Commission, he made sure the Localism Act served as the death knell to a SBE he viewed as ‘petty, silly and pointless’. This also ended the requirement for councils to have standards committees. In its place came the rather toothless sanctions regime that has spluttered on until the present day – leaving a parlous void where guardrails of ethical leadership should often be and leaving numerous instances of aberrant behaviour running unchecked.
In this respect, the government’s efforts to strengthen the standards and conduct framework for local government through consultation are both welcome and timely.
There are and will be genuine concerns to address as well as a precarious balance to be struck in all this. For instance, how might the new regime reduce the risk of Kafkaesque imbroglios arising from vexatious complaints of bullying where the process becomes the punishment? What about the danger that the cart of the formal conduct board might be put before the horse of standards imprinted upon by direct local leadership? And beyond this, the danger that local standards boards might mitigate against the need to hold the executive to account.
This is an area which Localis investigated in our report from last December ‘Present Tense’ with Grant Thornton making the case for reform and renewal local governance to avoid more of the financial scandals which scour and tarnish the reputation of the sector.
We took as our starting point the interdependent and mutually reinforcing problems of erosion of governance structures and capacity; inadequate and unsustainable funding models and the lack of local accountability, transparency, and public engagement.
As with so many aspects of place policy, there’s a lot of moving parts to all this – the standards consultation and the deliberations over how exactly the Local Audit Office will function as systems leader being just two main ones of many.
Alongside the round of local government reorganisation, and amid the impact on the whole of government accounts resulting from the woeful state of English council audit, there are great fears at the top reaches of government that we are merely setting in train a future of larger scale council financial disasters.
As a defence against this, a whole systems approach would be most desirable. This would involve councils proactively creating an organisational culture that fully embraces challenge and criticism and takes stock of and values diverse perspectives to hold leaders to account. Indeed, we argued authorities should review their whistleblowing policies to ensure that they reinforce such a culture, ensuring governance structures remain transparent and robust.
To this end, formalising local checks and balances would be helpful, as would establishing channels for open communication and engendering a desire to learn from past mistakes.
As part of this, across the sector, statutory monitoring officers need to be given more support and protection to effectively perform their duties. They must be given the necessary resources and authority to challenge potentially risky financial decisions without fearing repercussions. The sort of back to basics we should all get behind.
Jonathan Werran is chief executive, Localis