Training for Councillors - this is targetted text for my own council, but free to read it if you don
Like many councils, ffice:smarttags" />Hastings is beavering away to make the improvements identified by its Comprehensive Performance Assessment inspection.
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One of the priorities for the council is the subject of Overview and Scrutiny, where the Commission had some ‘frank and helpful’ comments to make.
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ffice" /> For my part, I have been forking over the Audit Commission website (hope you appreciate the gardening metaphor there) and dug up a really handy link to identify Commission comments by subject in CPA reports. After that, all you do is bash in the word ‘scrutiny’ and Bob’s your uncle.
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Of course we also don’t want to get into the position where we are just playing ‘catch-up’ with CPA, so just as important is how the framework for the next round of inspections is shaping up and what skills councillors will need to possess to meet future expectations of local government.
Back in 2003 the Office of the Deputy PM did some research into capacity building needs for local councils
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and this is of some use in working out what it takes to be a councillor. Further research was carried out by the LGA, who looked at the more specific question of urban political leadership skills
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At almost the same time a team led by Professor Jo Silvester from Goldsmith has assembled a complete ‘skills set’ for the Improvement and Development Agency
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Interestingly Professor Silvester has also recently conducted work on competency-based assessments to help the Conservative Party in evaluating parliamentary candidates
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This nice slant in the piece of work conducted for the IDeA, was that Jo Silvester concluded the job of a Councillor was probably more complicated than that of a member of parliament (a view I can support, since in my experience most MPs seem to have a degree of influence, while councillors actually have budgets and the responsibility of power to consider).
All of this work makes a useful starting point from which to assess the development needs of elected individuals who are charged with running increasingly complex local councils.
