Standards regime needs more “teeth”, town and parish councils say

Monitoring officers and standards committees lack the organisational capacity to promote, monitor and maintain ethical standards, the National Association for Local Councils (NALC) has warned.

In a submission to the Committee for Standards in Public Life's consultation on accountability within public bodies and the importance of acting on early warning signs, the organisation also said the standards regime lacks "teeth".

The consultation, which ran between 25 March and 14 June 2024, aimed to share best practices on "how organisations build and maintain systems of internal accountability that enable timely decision making, supporting proper scrutiny of their decision making".

The consultation also sought to tackle instances in which "indicators of emerging issues were present, but missed".

In its consultation response, NALC said: "The current standards regime not only lacks effective sanctions, but in many cases the 'regulators' (i.e. monitoring officers and standards committees) lack the organisational capacity to promote, monitor and maintain ethical standards.

"In short, the current regime needs more 'teeth'."

NALC highlighted frustration among councils over the inability to tackle bad behaviour.

It said: "There is a growing lack of confidence in the ability to change behaviour that falls below the accepted standard.

"Councils are frustrated that there is nothing they can do to change the actions or attitudes of certain persons be they councillors, council staff or members of the public."

To help, the group called for more basic training of councillors and council staff on the standards regime and said that central Government should invest more in "the improvement agenda at local council level".

In addition, NALC said "the opportunity should be found" to achieve additional capacity and economies-of-scale in local standards regimes through the voluntary pooling of resources within county areas by principal authorities.

The organisation also renewed a call for the full implementation of all the main recommendations from the Committee's 2019 report on Local Government Ethical Standards and called on the incoming Government to implement them.

Adam Carey