Serving your community well

Who It's For

New and experienced councillors; officers who work with members

Overview

Serving your community well is the complete councillor programme, five whole topics that take members from induction to confident political leadership and scrutiny, and help officers understand the people they work alongside. It begins with how local government works: its history, types and governance, the golden thread of the strategic framework, and the budget. It then reads the political environment, from the many hats a councillor wears to member-officer relationships and reorganisation. Standards come next through the Nolan Principles, interests and candour, followed by the craft of chairing and scrutiny. It closes with communities and partnership: Arnstein's ladder, asset-based community development and co-production in real Welsh and English places.

Aims

This programme aims to develop councillors, and the officers who support them, as confident and principled community leaders: able to navigate the council and its politics, uphold the highest standards of conduct, chair and scrutinise with purpose, and work alongside residents and partners to deliver what communities need.

In summary, you will be able to:

1. 1Explain how your council is structured, governed and financed, and how the strategic framework connects political promises to the services residents experience.
2. 2Apply the Nolan Principles, rules on interests and the craft of chairing and scrutiny to conduct council business fairly, openly and with genuine challenge.
3. 3Plan how you will lead in your community through partnership, participation and co-production, building on local strengths and working constructively with officers and partners.

What you'll develop

Through the programme, you will be able to:

1. 1Explain the scale and breadth of what English councils deliver, using the four service categories of caring, educating and housing, shaping places and everyday essentials.
2. 2Describe the four dimensions of a councillor's role, representative, decision maker, community leader and case worker, and explain why they pull in different directions.
3. 3Explain how your council's governance model shapes how and when you engage members on a decision.
4. 4Distinguish a code of conduct, which sets minimum standards, from a behavioural framework, which describes what good looks like.
5. 5Apply the programme's ethical themes, from blind spots to culture, to analyse a real or illustrative case.
6. 6Identify where the rules for your meeting come from and check that it is quorate, including when members leave part way through.
7. 7Apply McKnight and Kretzmann's five building blocks to map the assets already present in a place, and distinguish this from stakeholder mapping.
8. 8Identify which frameworks, such as asset-based development, the partnership continuum, co-production and Arnstein's ladder, explain the outcomes in each of the three cases.