Rossendale

Rossendale Borough Council is a good example of an authority in which a strong standards agenda has made a real difference – both to the way the council functions and to public opinion. A strong, visible standards campaign, with the strapline ‘Serious About Standards’, has not only boosted Rossendale from ‘poor’ to ‘good’ in its Corporate Assessment by the Audit Commission, but has also seen resident satisfaction up by 8% and an increased turn out at local elections.

“We’ve introduced a strong brand for standards, which is our SAS strapline. We’ve got it on mugs, we’ve got it on mousemats, we’ve got it right across the council, really, so that people don’t get the opportunity to forget that we are serious about standards, and that we see it as the strong heart of all the work we’ve tried to put in place,” says Chief Executive Carolyn Wilkins, explaining how the campaign has worked. It has also, she says, been useful in supporting another strand of Rossendale’s commitment to standards – the ethical standards training programme it runs for both staff and members.

“We found [the strapline] really useful as a hook for the trainer that comes in. We’ve done an awful lot of training for elected members, and we have governance champions in all our teams as well who carry those messages out, supporting staff with questions that they might have around the Code of Conduct.”

Carolyn admits that getting the ethical point across to members can be a challenge, but has found that the most successful approach has been a mixture of training and promotion, helped by the presence of a strong, independently-chaired standards committee. But she also stresses the importance, in terms of good practice, of making sure that the message comes from the top and is disseminated not just within the authority, but also the public.

“I’m very clear in my leadership stance that we’re really committed to this,” she says. “It’s very important that we do everything transparently, fairly and openly, for elected members and for staff. Equally, we will challenge where we feel that’s not happening. We’ve found it very useful where we’ve had a call from the public asking, ‘Are you serious about this, have you been dealing with it fairly?’ because we can say ‘Look, this is the process that we go through, this is the training we offer, the advice we’ve provided.’ And it’s very clearly set out for people, so they can really access what we’re doing.”

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