London Borough of Bromley

“Ethical standards is something we now do because we want to, not because we have to” says Mark Bowen, Monitoring Officer and Director of Legal, Democratic & Customer Services at the London Borough of Bromley.

Bromley has demonstrated a commitment to communicating standards. To achieve this, says Mark, they ensured links were in place between the standards committee, key service leaders, officers and members: “Things have developed considerably, and there’s now a strong ‘ethical dimension’ to everything we do. We believe that prevention is better than cure,” he says.

Development is a key part of Bromley’s success story. The authority entered the awards because it felt it had a story to tell, says Mark. They wanted to compare their work with that of other authorities and to monitor their progress:

“The award is prestigious. We wanted to make sure we were improving and to see what we could learn from it.

“We’ve had quite a journey over the last few years. We now interact with one another more often and more effectively, and we challenge ourselves more as a standards committee and as an authority.”

The standards committee placed an early focus on managing complaints: “We made sure we got our procedures right and that we were up to speed,” says Mark, “Standards are very important to the complainant so we wanted to be sure we were dealing with complaints as quickly and effectively as possible.

”We then focused on bringing ethical governance more into the mainstream. Internally, we set up regular visits to the committee by key services like planning and social care, to move ethical issues further up the agenda.

“Externally, we carried out an Equality Impact Assessment – we were one of the first authorities to do this.”
 
Through the Assessment, Bromley identified that the hardest people to reach in terms of communicating key standards messages were younger people. The standards committee used this discovery to develop a communications plan which saw the Chair begin visits to local schools, and the development of the committee’s web presence.

The authority has also demonstrated a commitment to increasing confidence in democracy through research it has carried out, argues Mark: “Standards do make a difference. Our last Place Survey took place during the MP expenses scandal, and we still managed to push up our trust rating by 10% at this time.”

But their successes don’t mean they will now be resting on their laurels, says Mark:

“We want to find even more ways for improvement and to spread the message.

“To be excellent you have to be trusted as an organisation. We have to make sure that what we do adds value and worth.

“Decisions should be safe, sound and should have an ’ethics dimension’. Diversity and standards are a priority, and so is being seen as excellent by the public.”