Good governance

The 'good governance' element of the local government chief executive role involves unified powers, being reasoned and reasonable, openness, advice, independence and citizenship.

  • Unified powers: distributed decision-making in one corporate entity
  • Reasoned and reasonable: basis of all decisions; sound ideas and good evidence
  • Open: meetings held in public, transparency and disclosure, whistleblowing
  • Advice: objective, impartial and open to formal scrutiny and public question
  • Independent: use of independent people to assure proper and due process
  • Citizenship: practice of governance links to everyday dialogue with residents

The structure of knowledge, experience and judgement across good governance principles and practices

 

Acquiring knowledge Gaining experience Sharpening judgement
  • Good governance principles in the corporate and public sector

     
  • Internal processes of scrutiny, formal ‘checks and balances’

     
  • Proportionality rules for political parties and locus of decision-making (constitution and statutory regulations)

     
  • Responsibilities of councillors in their various decision-making, scrutiny and community leadership roles

     
  • Role of the council’s core statutory officers in assuring probity and propriety

     
  • Audit committees, ethics panels and other assurance committees (safeguarding, and so on)
  • Conduct annual reviews of governance practice with councillors, advisers and residents

     
  • Learn from good governance and practices from other councils

     
  • Connect good governance practice through local public bodies and local community organisations

     
  • Produce clear, relevant and accessible annual governance statements

     
  • Work closely with the monitoring officer revising the council’s constitution and other key documents

     
  • Adopt a resident’s eye view of governance to ensure practice is meaningful
  • Help councillors to improve their effectiveness in both executive and scrutiny roles

     
  • Review instances of failure of due process (judicial reviews, serious complaints, ombudsman, Ofsted and Care Quality Commission reports) with legal support

     
  • Review the comprehensiveness and thoroughness of a sample of committee reports

     
  • Undertake an appraisal of the ethical considerations of all committee business on a rolling basis

     
  • Develop a personal reputation for dealing effectively with integrity violations of councillors and officers

Highlighted pages

Politics and the political interface

The 'politics and the political interface' element of the local government chief executive role involves impartiality, guiding, politics, political parties, tiers of government, interface and overlaps.

The core chief executive role

The 'core' element of the local government chief executive role involves coordination, management, staffing, advising the council, elections and dealing with emergencies.