Annual return 2010

In April 2009 we collected annual information returns from the 438 local authorities that we work with, covering the period 8 May 2008 to 30 March 2009.

It is important for us to collect information from monitoring officers and standards committees on how they are helping to maintain high standards of ethical conduct in their authorities. This assists us in ensuring the effectiveness of local standards arrangements.

Last year’s return was an opportunity for monitoring officers and standards committees to tell us in detail about the particular achievements, successes and difficulties they had in supporting and promoting the ethical framework. We used the returns to build up a bank of notable practice examples to share across the standards community. Many of these can be found on a dedicated notable practice section of our website and in our annual review of 2008-9.

We will be continuing to collect examples of notable practice in the annual return 2009-10. The information we gather will allow us to cultivate a national overview of the local operation of the standards framework. We will use this to identify strengths and weaknesses of the framework, prompting where we should be producing guidance or seeking policy changes in response to emerging national trends.

The questions in the annual return are currently being developed. Some will stay the same as last year so that we can report on progress, but many of them will change.

Our reasons

We are aiming to have a shorter questionnaire which will use tick boxes where possible to capture practices that are common across many authorities. This should mean that less time is required completing responses; unless there are exceptional circumstances or innovative activities to tell us about. We only expect authorities to provide lengthy responses where they think that a narrative will help others in the standards community who may find themselves in a similar position.

We appreciate that the timing of the annual return is not ideal. April marks the start of the new financial year and is inevitably a busy time for all concerned. However, we want to be able to relay the messages from the year as soon as possible. Therefore, like last year, we will be asking for annual returns to be completed during April and May.

To help authorities complete this task during a busy time, we will be publishing the questions earlier. We hope to communicate the questions to monitoring officers in January 2010. This is so authorities have more time to plan and consult with their standards committee and other key figures, such as the council leader and chief executive, when preparing their responses.

Previous Section  |  Contents  |  Next Section