Cabinet style local government increases need to monitor ethics

The rise of the cabinet system in local government has increased the need for effective monitoring of the ethical behaviour of senior politicians and council officers.

That’s one of the major conclusions of a year-long study examining the roles undertaken by Monitoring Officers in relation to the ethical framework introduced into local government in 2000.

The study for the Standards Board for England involved a team of academic researchers from the Universities of Teesside, Warwick and Liverpool. It was led by Alan Lawton, Professor of Organisational Ethics and Assistant Director of Research at Teesside Business School.

Professor Lawton and the project’s full-time researcher, Dr Michael Macaulay will be presenting some of the findings at the annual conference of the Standards Board for England being held at the NECC, Birmingham, on September 13-14.

They found wide discrepancies in the role, support and training of monitoring officers in different councils – with ‘ethical champions’ at one extreme and others merely ensuring that the code of conduct was followed.

“About 25% of Monitoring Officers are struggling,” said Professor Lawton. “Most, if not all, combine this role with another job such as head of legal services, and their workload has increased as a result of the modernisation agenda.

“The worst problems were experienced where monitoring officers were not part of the senior management team. Future problems are likely to arise when they are expected to combine an advisory role with that of actually investigating complaints of unethical behaviour by their own senior politicians. This is open to a conflict of interests.”

A difficulty faced by the researchers was that legislation changed during 2003-04 and the Standards Board is now handing down more complaints to local authorities to investigate and adjudicate upon.

Professor Lawton’s team also found that the cabinet system was altering the nature of local councils, creating a very powerful group of senior politicians with the rest of the councillors operating as back-benchers.

“This is concentrating power in a few hands in many councils and we concluded that the cabinet environment was making the need for effective Monitoring Officers and Ethics Committees even more important to ensure that everything was above board,” said Professor Lawton.

Key recommendations from the research include:

Ensure Monitoring Officer are part of the senior management team If the role is to be shared with other duties, head of legal services or a similar function is probably most suitable Separate the advisory and investigative roles by having a Deputy to handle complaints Have an ‘independent’ external Chair of the local authority’s ethics committee.

The full report of the research team led by Professor Lawton is due to be published in the autumn.

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