Independent governance review criticises undervaluing of legal advice at city council

Southampton City Council’s monitoring officer was excluded from many senior management meetings and the way in which advice from lawyers was sought by other officers was at times “chaotic”, a report commissioned by the local authority has found.

The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CfGS) said in its Review of Governance and Decision Making at Southampton Council that lawyers sometimes received instructions “at the last minute” when they should have been involved far earlier in the decision-making process.

After some years of a Labour administration, the Conservatives gained Southampton in 2021 but lost it back to Labour this year. The report largely concerns the Conservative period but said it had continuing lessons for the council.

CfGS said the Conservatives were keen on immediate action to implement their plans and “leading councillors felt a sense of impatience with officers, and existing systems, which [they] saw as holding up the need to act quickly and decisively”.

Councillors felt there was “resistance and pushback from officers on some issues [and] that officers may not be ‘on board’ with the new agenda”.

Officer concerns on the lack of clarity and assurance in decision making first emerged under the previous Labour administration but became more significant over the course of the Conservative one.

The Tories had come to power, the report said, “with a well-developed sense of what they wanted to achieve” and had “valued pace above some other considerations – wishing to cut through bureaucracy to deliver their objectives - and in some cases responded poorly to reasonable officer advice that a more considered approach was necessary”.

Southampton’s monitoring officer was not regularly present at Executive Management Team meetings, and although this had since changed “this undervaluing of legal expertise is taking time to be addressed”.

CfGS noted: “It seemed to us that part of this undervaluing was informed by an unwillingness on the part of the former administration (and, potentially, previous administrations) to treat such advice with the seriousness it deserves, and having an unsophisticated view of whether a proposed decision was or was not ‘legal’ in a technical sense, without wishing to take into account the council’s broader duties (in particular, those relating to best value.”

There was little understanding - particularly from former Conservative administration members - “of how effective legal and finance advice combine to help councillors to address their duties to deliver best value”, which meant it would be difficult for the council to assert that best value principles had been followed in some cases.

“Formal arrangements for the provision of legal (and other) advice, and signoff from lawyers, and other professionals, is present but is often not followed,” the CfGS said.

“The nature of ‘signoff’ of reports themselves is also unclear, with the circulation of draft reports by officers sometimes not following mandated procedures. This feeds into wider issues around officer and member ownership of reports and decisions.”

The report was particularly concerned about the provision of timely legal, financial, and equalities advice to councillors and “the way in which advice from lawyers has been sought by other officers has at times been chaotic – with lawyers receiving instructions and requests for advice at the last minute when they should be involved throughout the decision-making process”.

Councillors’ expectations around decision-making, including officer signoff on legal matters, could become “contorted and constrained”.

There had been a lack of planning by officers for the possibility of a new administration in 2021 and councillors’ consequent impatience with the pace of decision making and policy development, “developed – in a minority of instances – into an unwillingness to take and accept officer advice”.

In turn, relationships between senior officers and members of the administration “did not allow these conversations to happen with the necessary frankness and candour” and some Conservatives concluded certain officers were politically biased against them, and were ‘going slow’ on implementing decisions because of their personal opposition.

The report said: “Overall, the senior officer cohort needs to develop their skills in understanding politicians’ objectives and motivations, and their political astuteness overall.

"We have noted already that challenges around resilience in decision-making, which we mentioned above, were exacerbated in 2021 by a lack of pace on the part of officers in coming to terms with a new political environment, and thinking about how the councils’ priorities were likely to shift as a result.”

Overall, however, the CfGS found no fundamental and systemic flaws in the council’s governance framework and said the improvements needed largely related to “tackling relationships rather than undertaking fundamental revisions of processes, structures and systems”.

Mike Harris, Southampton’s chief executive, welcomed the review’s findings and its view that there were no fundamental or systemic flaws in the governance framework, but “a few areas in which we can improve”.

Mr Harris said: “We will be putting in place measures to ensure those improvements are made, including training for senior officers and new councillors, a review of the officer-member protocol to ensure roles and responsibilities are more clearly defined, and a greater focus by senior officers on policy development and collaboration with the leaders of all political parties. 

“I anticipate that through these actions we will improve the quality of our decision-making processes and I look forward to working closely with elected members of all political parties to keep improving the way we work on behalf of our residents and businesses.”

Mark Smulian