Access to top table more important than being at every meeting: Lord Kerslake

Local government lawyers should make sure they have access to the ‘top table’ and that they are listened to rather than necessarily feel the need to be "at every meeting", the former Head of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government has suggested.

Giving the keynote talk last week at a stakeholder event on good governance organised by Lawyers in Local Government, Lord Kerslake said that early in his career he had got to know the value of good local government lawyers. “I learnt a huge lesson about the importance of process of decision making and good legal advice – even if it annoyed you sometimes, it was necessary.”

The peer added that the process of decision making was drilled into him at the time, because the consequences of getting it wrong were “immediate and very painful”.

Lord Kerslake, who is now chairman of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, said good governance now was not just about decision-making, but “about the whole way the institution you are involved in conducts itself”. It was about good outcomes as well as good decisions, he added, and should be an all embracing concept at the heart of the organisation.

The cross-bencher said good governance had a number of characteristics such as accountability over who has made decisions, who is responsible for those decisions and “where the buck stops”.

Other elements of good governance were transparency/openness, lawfulness, responsiveness and fairness.

Lord Kerslake (pictured with LLG President Doreen Forrester-Brown) said there were new challenges in relation to governance following funding cuts.

Most local authorities in seeking to respond to the cuts in 2010 and 2015 had done so by stripping out management costs. However, the peer warned that this had made authorities less able to deal with problems, and meant there were fewer checks and balances.

“Local authorities are pushing towards more risky decisions,” he argued, insisting this was not a criticism. Having taken out the easier savings, it then becomes harder and harder and riskier, the peer said.

Lord Kerslake also highlighted the growing complexity in partnerships, partnering and joint ventures as well as the establishment of combined authorities and local enterprise partnerships and the introduction of sustainability and transformation partnerships with health.

In his speech he also stressed the importance and value of governance reviews.

On Brexit, he said he considered that it would be a process of damage limitation, arguing that there is “no version of Brexit that doesn’t make us less economically successful and less influential”.