The Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, a social purpose consultancy and national centre of expertise, which works to help organisations achieve their outcomes through improved governance and scrutiny, has published its Governance risk and resilience framework to support councils to be effectively governed. The framework, which is designed to reflect and supplement the broader Delivering Good Governance in Local Government Framework which was published in 2016, outlines a set of seven governance characteristics:
- Extent of recognition of individual and collective responsibility for good governance
- Awareness of political dynamics
- How the council looks to the future to set its decision-making priorities
- Officer and councillor roles
- How the council’s real situation compares to its sense of itself
- Quality of local (external) relationships and
- The state of member oversight through scrutiny and audit.
Each of the seven characteristics is accompanied by a set of positive and negative behaviours, designed to be used as prompts rather than as a checklist.