Governance— dashboard red lights

• Sound corporate governance is essential to maintain public confidence in the proper stewardship of public funds.
• Two National Audit Office reports (January 2019) should assist local and other public authorities in instituting and maintaining sound corporate governance arrangements.

For local authorities, the governance triumvirate (head of paid service (chief executive), monitoring officer (often the authority’s most senior lawyer) and chief finance officer) should be ensuring that all warning lights are suitably and cohesively functioning. And the external auditor is there in the public interest to ensure that all’s well and to blow the referee’s whistle if not.

However, Northamptonshire County Council was one authority that apparently ran through its red lights, causing a nasty crash into statutory intervention. For on 27 March 2018 the government appointed commissioners to take over various council functions. These included governance and scrutiny, statutory officer appointments, strategic financial management and later children’s social care functions. The intervention followed a statutory inspection