05/09/2025
It is now 25 years since I was first appointed as a monitoring officer of a local authority. Not so coincidentally, it is also now 25 years since most of the provisions of the Local Government Act 2000 came into force. The 2000 Act brought about a number of significant changes to the governance of local authorities and, not least because the English Devolution Bill and further legislative changes the White Paper promises, this is a point of reflection.
The lack of coincidence with my appointment was that one of the governance changes introduced by the 2000 Act was the required the separation of the role of head of paid service from that of the monitoring officer. Although arguably ten years later than it should have been, it is this that created the golden triangle.
Before the last major local government reorganisation of 1974, and the Bains report that altered the shape of local authority management, most councils didn’t have a chief executive, but had a treasurer and, as de facto first amongst equals, a clerk. Most but not all treasurers were qualified accountants and most but not all clerks were legally qualified, creating a twin-pillar arrangement of governance.
Fast forward and the role of chief executive became as largely intended by the Bains report, and remains, a generalist executive management role, steeped in policy advice, co-ordination, relationships and delivery.
For those who clung on to the past, the responsible officer as head of paid service and the responsible officer for the secretariat, governance and legal matters remained synonymous as a duality with the role of chief executive. This of course could never universally be the case and the individuals who now fulfil this role can come from vastly different backgrounds. Even when those who were once council lawyers or governance officers become the chief executive, they quickly recognise that, however useful their training might be, they must leave their previous jobs behind and recognise that these are roles that require largely different skill-sets to be maintained and deployed.
More than that, as things changed the role of the chief executive as both head of paid service and monitoring officer, as both boss and legal and administrative ‘proper officer’, was recognised as being unbalanced and placing too much power in one set of hands. The final and enforced separation of the roles was therefore heralded with the following parliamentary statement, which politely responded to a question about one of the scandals that saw abuses of power not by the politicians but by the chief executive, that the introduction of the Local Government Act 2000 would mean that:
“In future, under legislation that we shall introduce, it will not be possible for a chief executive to combine the role of head of paid service with that of monitoring officer—as is currently the case in several authorities ... The increased demands that will be placed on those officers both by the new political structures and by the new conduct framework that we are introducing will, in our view, make the ability of one individual to hold both posts untenable, as well as increasing the likelihood of conflicts of interest between the two roles.”
It is for this reason that, in September 2000, I was elevated from head of service to head of service and monitoring officer, fundamentally changing my role within the authority. Except it didn’t, or not at first at least. This was the same for many in my position and remains the same for some monitoring officers and chief finance officers even now. I was previously invited to attend management team, but now attended by right, although sometimes on sufferance or on protest from others. Slowly, as we dealt with conflict and issues, the golden triangle formed and proved its worth. Following management and budget restructures, it then became a management team resembling a square, of head of paid service, chief operating officer, s.151 officer and monitoring officer. I then moved from a district to a city, where my role of a new and (only relatively) young monitoring officer meant that we went through that process all over again, and then again over several chief executives. And then again across several local authorities as I moved and tended to lean towards what may be referred to as difficult authorities.
Throughout these 25 years, that relationship of the golden triangle, what the roles mean, how they interact with each other, other officers, with members and externally, has continued to ebb and flow. Solace has sought to better identify what it means to be a chief executive, prepare for the next generation of leaders and equip them with the right skills and approach. Likewise CIPFA with chief finance (s.151) officers. ACSeS / LLG, of which I was president in 2011-2013, also sought to do the same by creating the Monitoring Officer Protocol and placing itself in the conversations to be had.
Cementing this golden triangle relationship and roles took a real step forward when I was asked to draft the Code of Practice on Good Governance for Local Authority Statutory Officers by LLG, Solace, and CIPFA. A year on and it has become a touchstone for those individuals, inspectors and peer reviews alike and, now, a short summary guide has been produced, The Golden Triangle: Governance Roles and Responsibilities.
LLG have now focussed in on this, the current president committing to establish a dedicated professional body within their ranks to represent, encourage and educate monitoring officers. Our work continues.
And as for the headline changes brought about by the Local Government Act 2000?
The promotion of economic, social or environmental well-being etc (Part 1) later morphed into the general power of competence and has become a stalwart power of first resort for all local authorities, meaning lawyers look at what the remainder of administrative public law says what the authority cannot do, rather than desperately looking to find a power to hang the latest initiative on in the hope it can be achieved as we used to do.
The conduct of local government members and employees (Part 3) replaced the threat of surcharge for councillors with a new system of censure, suspension and disbarment, somewhat akin for charity trustees or company directors when fallen below the standards expected of them, based on a new code of conduct. Whilst it continued as intended in the other parts of the UK, in England the system of adjudication and the Standards Board for England fell away. The SBE, as we know, became overwhelmed and the die was then cast for a localist approach that has meant councillors in England are now the least regulated they have ever been since 1926. Whether there is then causation or correlation with a fall in civility in political discourse and a rise in poor behaviours amongst a number is an ongoing debate, but the frustration is there to be seen and the calls from almost all political corners and the Committee in Standards in Public Life has made itself felt. Certainly, that a councillor can do any number of things shy of them receiving a three month prison sentence (or more recently being placed on the sex offender register) and receive no realistic sanction for their behaviour if they choose to stick it out, including the numerous examples of receiving a criminal conviction for defrauding their own council, does not feel right. The White Paper has responded with a promise to reintroduce sanctions, but we are yet to see the detail or the draft legislation.
Part 2 (Arrangements with respect to executives etc.) heralded the greatest change in terms of governance of local authorities down the ages. The collective committee and officer structures as established by the Local Government Act 1972 remain the basis upon which non-executive council functions are to be run, but over this placed the hard delegative wall between non-executive council decision making and executive decision-making, now the responsibility of a leader (or mayor) and their cabinet. This was in response to a series of papers looking to modernise local government, from the Audit Commission paper “We Can't Go On Meeting Like This: The Changing Role of Local Authority Members” and various think tanks looking to New Zealand, USA and central government itself. 25 years on and we have seen a sway between some choice, a ‘strong’ senior executive member (leader or mayor), a choice to return to the committee system and likely back again.
The development of governance previously, as embodied in the Local Government Act 1972, was in turn built upon similar governance provisions of the Local Government Act 1933, the Local Government Act 1888, the Municipal Corporations Act 1882 and the first enforcement of popular elections by Municipal Corporations Act 1835, replacing the provision of services by ad hoc boards, committees and the charter corporations of the mayor and burgesses of a city, borough or corporation (leaving out the City of London Corporation).
In other words, councils had been run the same way for nigh on 150 years and now another way for 25 years. Aside from the great step forward in openness brought about by the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985, which I think we can all agree took a knocking under the concept of key decisions and the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012, rescued a little by the 2014 regulations, it is interesting to watch the arguments of central government in planning to remove the “confusion” of the committee system choice and also future directly elected mayors as against those that argue for them, including those that have won those arguments via a local referendum. Which system will win out in the long term is something that will keep academics and lawyers such as ourselves in business for quite some years I think.
With the devolution changes, creation of strategic authorities and local government reorganisation to a unitary model (with local councils and enforced area devolution of some kind), along with the internal nuts and bolts changes to how councils and combined authorities are to work, we are about to head in to a further exciting 25 years.
In its review of the Local Government Act 2000 ‘May you live in interesting times: the consequences of political restructuring for officers’ (2001) the Audit Commission (remember them?) commented that:
“The Monitoring Officer is likely to be in one of the least comfortable roles in new settlements”.
That did indeed prove to be true in many local authorities, where good governance came up against poor practice and a testing of the political and ethical boundaries. That said, and more importantly in my view, the role has also proved to be exciting, satisfying and establishes the post-holder with a unique position to play a part across the full range of all the good that a local authority delivers and seeks to do. Something tells me that none of that is about to change anytime soon.
