Blog: 27 January 2023 - Helen McGrath, Head of Public Affairs

Those with an interest in ethics (and let’s hope that applies to everyone in the public sector!), paid attention to the recent report this week from the Committee on Standards in Public Life entitled, ‘Learning in Practice’. It highlights several examples of best practice and leadership in handling ethical issues and there’s a list of questions for leaders to address, in improving their own approach to these issues.

Chapter 3 covers ‘encouraging a speak up culture’. Essential, but easier said then done when you are facing a wall of oppression, where barriers permeate at all levels within the organisation. If the government moved more swiftly in enacting the promised statutory protections for chief officers, it would ease this path greatly.  

Then we have yet another public interest report, recently published and again highlighting the issue of poor ethics, governance and indeed, lawful compliance. PIR’s seem to be coming thick and fast. The complete lack of effective sanctions is once again, (dare I say) enabling poor behaviour or at best, removing a simple and effective tool to ensure an authority can quickly redress failings and revert back to appropriate ‘Nolan’ compliance. Despite this, there appears no appetite to move forward on sanctions. We will not give up however, and remain committed to the provision of effective sanctions under our ‘Golden Triangle’ umbrella campaign. 

Also falling under the campaign is the role of legal within their own local authority. We are currently working across a number of workstreams to gather together all the evidence from PIR’s and real life experiences of MO’s in order to produce an effective report, which spells out the issues in no uncertain terms and categorically demonstrates the monumental impact on effective governance from marginalising the legal department and down grading the role of the Head of Legal and Monitoring Officers.  

If you would like to feed into our Golden Triangle Campaign, please do get in touch.  

Helen McGrath 

Head of Public Affairs  

Helen@llg.org.uk