Centre for Public Scrutiny warns against knee-jerk governance changes

The Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS) has warned councils against changing their structures in the aftermath of events in Rotherham.

The public accountability charity described calls to ditch the cabinet/leader model of governance post-Rotherham as “premature”.

Last week the Communities Secretary announced an intervention package that would include sending a team of commissioners in to run the local authority.

This followed a devastating report from Louise Casey, who found that the council was not “fit for purpose”.

Rotherham’s Leader resigned with immediate effect following the report's publication, while the council’s Cabinet said it would resign as soon as transitional arrangements were put in place.

The CfPS argued that culture rather than structure could fuel risk of service failure.

“Irrespective of its governance structure, no council is immune from service failure,” it warned. “It is wrong to suggest that structural change automatically means better, more responsive and safer services.”

The charity noted that there were plenty of examples of service failure going back through the 1960s to the 1990s before the cabinet/leader structure was introduced in local government.

It said this demonstrated that the committee system was “not intrinsically more open, responsive or somehow immune to failure and wrongdoing”.

The charity added: “Since the abolition of that system for all but a handful of councils in 2000, the emergence of other scandals – Rotherham among them – has shown that the cabinet system does not have that immunity either.

“Councils should resist the temptation to change structures in the hope that doing so will cause people to behave differently. Behaviour is more likely to change as a result of a change in culture. Service and governance failures often result from a range of complex factors.”

The CfPS said reviewing culture was the key to ensuring that what had happened in Rotherham and Mid-Staffordshire never happened again.

Tim Gilling, the centre’s Acting Executive Director, said: ‘Whatever governance system a council operates, councillors need to have the confidence and ambition to question decisions, to hold the council’s performance to account and to drive improvements in the interests of local people.

“Crucially they need to make sure they are able to hear the voices of local people and not rely only on performance management information generated by people that plan and deliver services. Council scrutiny needs support from political leaders and managers to do this. These principles should be at the heart of any system of governance whether committee system, cabinet and leader or elected mayor.”

Gilling urged all councils to review their governance in the light of the Francis and Jay reports into Mid-Staffordshire and Rotherham respectively, if they have not already done so.