The LGA is mapping the improvement and assurance framework for local government
Councils are responsible for their own performance and improvement.
This is recognised in the ‘sector-led improvement’ approach, underpinned by the key principles that councils:
- are accountable locally, not nationally
- have a sense of collective responsibility for the performance of the local government sector.
Sector-led improvement has always played a part in providing local authorities with assurance of their own performance. Increasingly, it is contributing to the assurance of councils’ performance for the wider public and central government.
The LGA provides councils with tools and resources to respond to opportunities, address complex challenges and facilitate continuous improvement. We also maintain an overview of the performance of the sector.
Our free data benchmarking platform – LG Inform – enables any council’s performance to be compared with any other council or group of councils.
Corporate peer challenge reports are all published: we have made this work more robust by requiring councils to produce action plans, with a progress review in the following 12 months.
Sector-led support shines a light on issues such as governance, financial planning and performance, enabling councils to take action before they become more serious.
There are many opportunities for councils to be held to account.
Councils conduct their business in the most open and transparent way of all public authorities.
The structures that reinforce this accountability include:
- free and fair elections for councillors responsible for making public decisions
- independent external audit
- independent regulation of service standards and practice
- opportunities for individuals and their advocates to complain and seek redress for service and ethical failures.
All councils have internal controls, challenges and practices in place to ensure that they adhere to good governance principles.
These include councillor scrutiny, audit and risk controls, annual governance statements, actions taken by officers with statutory roles, propriety in decision-making, and responsibility for management arrangements.
Additionally, councils challenge and support each other to continuously improve, supported by the LGA’s improvement programmes and resources.
Councils exist to improve the quality of life of – and the quality of places for – the communities they serve. Therefore, the focus of councils’ assurance work is on the assurance they provide to local communities.
However, currently, there is no document or framework that sets out, in one place, the various required elements of council assurance and how they all fit together.
We believe that mapping such a framework would be useful – both for councils and the public.
So, we are convening discussions with councils in every region, representatives of professional associations and others, and engaging with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to map out the various elements that provide assurance of council performance and are used to hold the sector to account.
Our aim is to describe the assurance framework for councils that currently exists but is not yet written down; improve understanding of how the various elements of assurance work together; and increase clarity and transparency.
Since the scope and objectives are so wide-ranging, we will mainly focus on corporate, rather than service-specific sources of assurance.
Once we’ve completed the system-wide mapping, there will be opportunities for stakeholders to consider whether any of the current checks and balances could be simplified, improved, or enhanced, and if any further action is required to ensure that support and assurance for those requiring a higher level of assurance are used suitably and in the timeliest way possible.
- To find out more and to give your views, please visit the assurance and peer support page on our website.