Standards and new methods of delivering public services

In its Annual Plan for the next 12 months, the committee confirmed that it expects – “barring any unforeseen developments” – to undertake an assessment of the state of local government standards in 2014/15.

In the interim the watchdog will continue to monitor the regime, which it has previously criticised for a lack of available sanctions and independent scrutiny. It also plans to see if there is any evidence that austerity is having an impact on support for maintaining high standards.

So far, apart from the furious row that broke out over the performance of monitoring officers in the aftermath of a Westminster Hall debate earlier this year, there has been little public debate over the operation of the post Localism Act regime.

It would be good to know people’s experience of the first year, so please do use the online poll or comments facility to let us know how it has worked out (this can be done anonymously).

In the meantime the CSPL highlights what is potentially a growing issue in relation to governance and standards – the new methods of delivering public services.

It plans a series of seminars on this issue, the first of which is on police and crime commissioners and the ethical risks and issues they face.

There will then be a seminar on the ethical issues faced in educational provision, including academies and free schools. This is timely, with MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warning this week that new governance, compliance and oversight arrangements for academies “remain vulnerable to failure”.

Some serious cases of governance failure and financial impropriety in academies had gone undetected by the Department for Education, the report said.

The MPs added that the DfE had still not made completely clear the roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of different organisations – including local authorities – across the changing schools system.

The Committee for Standards in Public Life also plans to hold a session on the arrangements for clinical commissioning groups, which have a key role in the changed healthcare landscape.

The CSPL says it envisages that the outputs of these various seminars may feed into a broader inquiry into new methods of public service delivery. The watchdog intends to also carry out some in-depth fact-finding research which would support such an inquiry. 

But the case for a full inquiry, despite the committee's financial constraints, already seems pretty compelliing.

Now on Local Government Law TV: Codes of Conduct under the Localism Act 2011 by John Sharland of Sharpe Pritchard.