Town hall ‘corruption’ – can it be monitored and controlled?

‘Town Hall corruption probe’ and ‘Councillor in court over alleged expenses fiddle’ are the types of headlines finding their way into the national and local press with increasing regularity.

And every time such stories appear, peoples’ confidence and trust in our public sector managers and elected politicians takes another downward turns.

That’s why Ethics Committees were introduced in every local authority in 2001. But how effective have they been? To find out a research team led by Professor Alan Lawton from the University of Teesside has been awarded a £97,000 contract by the Standards Board for England.

“There have been some high profile cases, such as those at Doncaster Council, involving councillors’ expenses which have sent out shockwaves about the ethical governance of local authorities. Private Eye’s regular fortnightly column on what it calls ‘Rotten Boroughs’ doesn’t inspire public confidence either,” he said.

“Our research will help to establish whether the newly-appointed monitoring officers have been effective. We will also look at whether fraud is epidemic or whether we’re just talking about a small number of high-profile incidents attracting a lot of publicity. In particular we want to see whether the role of monitoring officers in local government can help to regain trust in our town hall elected representatives,” said Professor Lawton, Professor of Organisational Ethics and Assistant Director (Research) with Teesside Business School.

He has worked in the field of public accountability and fraud management for over ten years, and written one of the few texts on the subject, Managing the Public Services: Ethical Management for the Public Services, Open University Press, 1998. His work has often taken him overseas including a spell working for the United Nations on developing anti-corruption measures in Ethiopia and research for the European Union in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania.

The team that Professor Lawton is leading on his latest project for the Standards Board includes colleagues from Teesside, Brunel and Liverpool Universities. It will start with a general questionnaire being sent to 387 authorities in October and then early next year case study research will be conducted into a sample group of councils. The results are expected in June, 2004.

The work is part of an expanding portfolio of research and consultancy being undertaken by Teesside Business School’s three recently established research centres. These specialise in cover the areas of Leadership and Organisational Change, Entrepreneurship and SME Development and Public Services Management. (link to launch of new centres article)

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