• How good is your governance?
• IDeA peer review and peer challenge
• Standards for England
• Complaints to the Local Government Ombudsmen
• Customer satisfaction surveys and annual household surveys
• Diagnostic tools

How good is your governance?

There are a number of places where you can check how good your governance is - and others can tell you following their assessment of your organisation.

Inspection and external audit

CAA, is a new way (2009) of providing an independent overview of the quality of life in an area. It examines how well councils are working together with other public bodies to meet the needs of the people they serve. It's a joint assessment by six independent inspectorates:

• Audit Commission
• Care Quality Commission
• HM Inspectorate of Constabulary
• HM Inspectorate of Prisons
• HM Inspectorate of Probation
• Ofsted

Assessments are publicly available and provide an annual snapshot of quality of life in the area. The first results were published on the oneplace website, launched in December 2009.

One part of the CAA is an assessment in each area of:

• local authorities
• fire and rescue authorities
• police authorities and forces
• primary care trusts

Appointed auditors carry out the assessment every year, as part of the external audit.

The framework used by the Audit Commission is called Use of Resources. It is the Audit Commission assessment of how well organisations are managing and using their resources to deliver value for money and better and sustainable outcomes for local people. The Audit Commission has defined the use of resources assessment in a broader way than previously. It now embraces the use of natural, physical and human resources. It also places a new emphasis on commissioning services for local people and achieving value for money.

Auditors produce a judgment for each of the following three themes:

• Managing finances - focusing on sound and strategic financial management
• Governing the business - focusing on strategic commissioning and good governance
• Managing resources - focusing on the effective management of natural resources, assets and people.

Some authorities have also undergone a corporate governance inspection that looks in detail at their corporate governance arrangements.

The Benefit Fraud Inspectorate also works with the Audit Commission and reports separately on councils.

Your external auditors provide an independent opinion on your council’s financial statements. They may review, and report on, aspects of the arrangements to be put in place to ensure the proper conduct of financial affairs and to manage performance and use of resources. The annual audit letter will give you a good summary of any issues.

IDeA peer review and peer challenge

Your council may have had an IDeA local Corporate Peer Review, which looks at your organisation's strengths and weaknesses and makes recommendations for improvement. Access more information on the IDeA's website.

Standards for England

Standards for England (SfE) provides an independent, national overview of how local authorities promote and improve the ethical behaviour of their members. There is now greater local ownership of the standards framework and the Standards for England has a new strategic role.

SfE assists local authorities in their work by providing support and guidance, as well as investigating cases which it is inappropriate for authorities to deal with themselves. It is responsible for promoting high ethical standards. Details of completed investigations into allegations of misconduct can be found at the Standards for England website.

SfE oversees members' Code of Conduct and makes suggestions to government about how it can be improved further, issue guidance on all aspects of our work, carry out investigations that cannot be undertaken locally and gives advice and support on case handling and broader governance issues.

In addition to these existing roles SfE also:

• defines what it is that people can expect the standards framework to deliver. This will include what is expected of monitoring officers and standards committee members.
• ensures the effectiveness of the local arrangements, not just nationally, but also at a local level.
• requires most local authorities to complete an annual return on how well it has been managing standards locally.

Complaints to the Local Government Ombudsmen

The Local Government Ombudsmen (LGO) investigates complaints of injustice arising from maladministration by councils. It produces an annual letter for each council. They investigate complaints about most council matters including housing, planning, education, social services, consumer protection, drainage and council tax. The Ombudsmen can investigate complaints about how the council has done something but they cannot question what a council has done simply because someone does not agree with it.

Looking at a complaint and tracking it back to see what went wrong can provide useful insights into the strengths and weaknesses of an organisation and the impact that these have on users.

Increasingly, services at the local level are delivered through a partnership of providers. A report by LGO highlights poor governance arrangements in many areas. The report shows it is often unclear where responsibility lies when something goes wrong? The report also highlights the problems that are involved in handling complaints, where there is a partnership of service providers.

Customer satisfaction surveys and annual household surveys

The CIPFA Statistical Information Service (SIS) provides a wealth of comparative information on councils. The SIS undertakes surveys (currently 45) each year covering all main activities of local government from Archives to Waste Collection. MORI also undertakes regular surveys of customer satisfaction for local councils, which you can access from the MORI website.

Diagnostic tools

Many tools have been developed to help understand how well your organisation is doing, many of which are provided by the Audit Commission. The Committee on Standards in Public Life produced a report on the Standards of Conduct in Public Life, which endorsed the Audit Commission governance tools and recommended that they are used throughout the public sector.

The Audit Commission tools, and those from CIPFA, are outlined below.

Good Governance Standard

Supports improvement by assessing governance of an organisation or partnership using a survey, diagnostic and workshops. Based on the Good Governance Standard for Public Services (external PDF), and is aligned with CIPFA/SOLACE's Annual Governance Statement for local government.

Governance of equalities, diversity and human rights

The Audit Commission has a strong commitment to promoting high standards of governance in relation to equalities, diversity and human rights, and to helping public bodies to deliver improvements for diverse groups. The diagnostic is a set of tools designed to help local public bodies, including public partnerships, health, and police to assess how well good governance is delivering improvements for diverse groups within their communities.

Changing Organisational Cultures

Raises fraud awareness within client organisations through a survey and workshops.

Your Business @ Risk

Helps clients to review their exposure to IT risk raising their awareness of risks associated with IT, gauging awareness among members of staff, benchmarking themselves against others, highlighting areas where they need to improve and allowing them to measure their progress over time.

Ethical governance diagnostic

Assesses ethical governance arrangements in organisation covered by the Local Government Act 2000 - local government, police, fire and rescue and parks authorities and Greater London Authority using a survey, diagnostic and workshops.

Governance of risk

'Risk it to make it' is based on tried and tested frameworks devised by HM Treasury and contains information on what represents excellent and strongly improving performance through integrated risk management.

CIPFA financial management model

Strong and effective financial management is key to well-managed and sustainable public services. The CIPFA Financial Management model is a web-based self-assessment tool that examines financial management in the public services. The self-assessment tool allows organisations to assess the contribution financial management makes at all levels of the organisation. Access more information about the Financial Management Model, and a demonstration of the self-assessment tool. You can also download a PDF copy of the CIPFA financial management model (PDF file, 448 KB, 68 pages).

CIPFA guidance on audit committees

'Audit Committees: Practical Guidance for Local Authorities' provides flexible advice that will allow authorities to develop committees to suit their needs while adhering to fundamental principles. CIPFA's 'Toolkit for Local Authority Audit Committees' (PDF file, 371 KB, 51 pages) builds on this guidance including a self-assessment checklist.

CIPFA Risk Management Toolkit

The Risk Management Toolkit from CIPFA's Better Governance Forum offers practical advice and examples of risk management practice. It includes case studies and access to over 50 documents demonstrating how organisations have implemented risk management. These include policies, strategies, training material and reports. It also contains links to risk management resources available from CIPFA and other bodies.