Council-wide assurance means having mechanisms in place to ensure evidence-based, sound, and transparent decision making. Within Essex, this takes place in multiple ways.
What is meant by council-wide assurance? What does it mean in Essex in particular?
Council-wide assurance means having mechanisms in place to ensure evidence-based, sound, and transparent decision making. Within Essex, this takes place in multiple ways.
How does this work in practice?
Service assurance statements are central to our council-wide approach to assurance. This as an annual self-assessment, completed by each Executive Director, that encompasses the many dimensions of assurance, from financial to internal controls. The statements have a strong focus on action and resolution as well as problem diagnosis.
The self-assessments are then reported through to the corporate leadership team.
The Corporate Governance Steering Board has led on member-level oversight of certain governance and assurance issues. We have an Audit Governance and Standards Committee and a Constitution Working Group which consider aspects of assurance and governance. The Audit, Governance and Standards Committee seeks to innovate by obtaining assurance in innovative ways to supplement the outputs of the internal audit service.
The Finance Oversight Board ensures collective, member-level ownership of financial management and controls, and has led to a greater awareness of financial issues to consider.
Essex has mandatory governance training for all officers that must be renewed bi-annually: this reinforces the importance of the subject throughout the organisation, including specific training for budget holders.
There is a specific focus on ensuring take-up at a senior level to ensure they are modelling best practice, and the online module requires answers to be correctly answered before completion.
The quality of reports produced by officers is also key to maintaining council-wide assurance. A focus on report-writing skills of officers is an important part of their learning and development, ensuring that the reports are evidence driven with robust options to inform effective decision-making. The Chief Executive, Monitoring Officer and s151 Officer review reports to Cabinet to ensure they meet required standards.
There is an understanding that, for information to be transparent and accessible to the public, it must be readily understood. The approach to setting the budget is designed to be understood and visible by all members and the wider public. We withhold publication of exempt information only rarely and, where there is exempt information, we generally put this in an exempt appendix, so that there is visibility of as much of the report as possible.
The Monitoring Officer reinforces the importance of transparent decision-making.
Essex has paid attention to the culture of trust between members and officers: this political maturity means that officers are able to share confidential information with members as appropriate. Any issues of poor conduct are dealt with robustly as they arise. We have recently refreshed the protocol on member/officer relations.
There is widespread understanding of the crucial role of member committees which contribute to assurance – particularly audit and the scrutiny committees.
Which roles make a particular difference?
The Chief Executive models and reinforces the importance of good governance.
The ‘golden triangle’ of the Chief Executive, Monitoring Officer and s151 officer is at the centre of the approach, with the interplay between the three top officers essential to maintaining effective assurance.
The Chief Audit Executive and the Statutory Scrutiny Officer also have a key role.
This relationship is reflected at member level with the Leader, Deputy Leader and Portfolio Holder responsible for resources playing an important role in upholding the values of transparency, and open decision-making. It is the role of the council leader to challenge and reinforce good governance and the Deputy Leader has a specific accountability for corporate governance.
The Director of Legal and Assurance and the Head of Assurance work with members to ensure a good understanding of risk management and its importance.
How is this sustained over the long term?
To maintain this approach over the longer term, it has been essential to embed an organisational culture of continual learning and development. Essex positions itself as a learning organisation: members set an expectation that officers will ‘pause and learn’.
Essex has launched Annual Learnfest to promote the culture of learning and applying this learning in everyday work.
It is important not to become hubristic about the performance of the authority and actively engage in looking outwards to inform improvement, bringing in external perspectives to provide challenge. A peer review of the county’s procurement function was a recent example.
Good governance infrastructure evolves with the organisation, this should be reflected in the corporate approach to assurance. This partly begins with the staff onboarding process and is continued through sustained skills development.
what are your top tips?
- Engage in shared learning across the sector. Seek out other authorities or individuals you can learn from, pursue this, and observe what they are doing. This includes learning from councils in intervention.
- The Cabinet agenda setting meeting brings rigour to forward planning, facilitates collective ownership of decisions and enables upstream engagement of key professional officers in the development of proposals.
- Put in place a calm and orderly plan to improve. To embed sustained change over time, a forward-looking plan with a long-term vision is needed.
- Effecting change of this nature when it has not been institutionalised is very difficult as the systemic nature of the organisation will be a barrier.
- The ‘Golden Triangle’ is central to implementing change and ensuring standards are maintained, it cannot just be achieved by one individual.
Contact for further information
Sophie Crane, Senior Democratic Services Officer – [email protected]