Monitoring Officer Report Monitoring Officer Report April 2018 17 Acting in the public interest with integrity, openness and transparency has suffered in recent times and that needs to be built up again.” Where once, the monitoring officer role was indivisible from that of head of legal, there is a growing distinction between the functions. It was even suggested that in some cases, the head of Democratic Services might even be a better candidate for the MO’s job. One effect of the changes to the role identified at the roundtable is that the skills and knowledge required to perform the role are no longer necessarily the preserve of lawyers. As the survey found, there is a surprising amount of ambivalence amongst monitoring officers about whether the monitoring officer needs to be legally-qualified, with less than 60% of respondents saying that it was essential. This division of opinion was, by and large, reflected at the roundtable. Being able to identify risk, it was generally agreed, is as much as about enhanced political awareness as knowing, or having access to knowledge of, the law. “I think you can cause more problems being a picky lawyer as a monitoring officer than you'll ever cause having a non-lawyer as a monitoring officer who knows when to seek advice and knows where the risk areas are,” said Paul Evans, Head of the South London Legal Partnership (SLLP). This view was not universally shared, however. “The monitoring officer is the council equivalent of the general counsel [in the commercial sector],” said Michael Graham. “It's not the council equivalent of the company secretary. And in good companies you might have both of those and in small ones they may be one and the same because they've emerged as from being a good GC to being a good company secretary. “Yes democratic services can get close to the politicians, they can get business through, they can take soundings, they know where the problems are, you can work very closely with them, but if there is a problem coming down the line, somebody has got to get to grips with and take personal accountability for it, then I think that's got to be the monitoring officer, and I think they've got to be legally qualified.” Defensive measures For all that good governance is increasingly a team effort, when it comes to individual decisions, the buck will ultimately stop with the MO, as many have found to their cost. When push comes to shove, being able to cope with conflict situations is often based on the groundwork the monitoring has put in before the event rather than waving the big stick of a section 5 report. “The first thing you've got to have is political sensitivity - they need to trust you but then you have to have bottle to say if something’s not right as well,” Kathy Nicholson, Head of Law and Monitoring Officer at the London Borough of Lewisham told delegates. “The trust part is so important that if they trust you, then they know if you're saying no, you wouldn't be doing it if you didn't have to and that you've done all you can trying to find the solution. You have to be the goalkeeper as well as the centre forward, sometimes.” In more intractable situations, however, holding out against intransigent members (or senior officers) can be a very uncomfortable experience and many delegates knew of colleagues who had lost their jobs or suffered extreme stress as a Attendees ● Derek Bedlow, Publisher, Local Government Lawyer ● Suki Binjal, Director of Law and Governance, London Borough of Hackney and chair of Lawyers in Local Governance (LLG) ● Rachel Crosbie, Nplaw and monitoring officer for Norwich City Council ● Helen Edwards, Kennedy Cater ● Paul Evans, Head of the South London Legal Partnership ● Simon Goacher, Head of Local Government, Weightmans LLP ● Michael Graham, Head of Corporate Governance, Spelthorne BC ● Philip Hoult, Editor, Local Government Lawyer ● Sharn Matthews, Executive Director and Monitoring Officer at East Northamptonshire Council (and non-legally-qualified monitoring officer) ● Helen McGrath, Policy and Communications Manager, Lawyers in Local Government ● Tim Morel, Director, Kennedy Cater ● Kath Nicholson, Head of Law and Monitoring Officer, London Borough of Lewisham ● Debra Norman, Chief Legal Officer, London Borough of Brent ● Terry Osborne, Assistant Chief Executive, London Borough of Bexley ● Richard Ward, Monitoring Officer, Eastleigh Borough Council The already wide range of governance risks to be managed by the monitoring officer is being joined by issues such anti-bribery, data protection and anti-money laundering. Meanwhile the resources elsewhere in the council to spot and deal with governance risks are diminishing as more senior officers have retired or taken redundancy.