The future of Standards for England and the Standards Framework
The Government’s ‘Programme for Government’ of 20 May 2010 contained the commitment to “abolish the Standards Board regime”. Primary legislation is needed to abolish Standards for England, and we expect the provisions to be included in the planned Decentralisation and Localism Bill which is due to be presented in late 2010, with Royal Assent anticipated between July and October 2011. This is likely to lead to final closure of this organisation sometime between 31 December 2011 and 31 March 2012. We have not seen any transitional provisions at this stage but will provide an update in a later Bulletin, when we know more.
In the light of these circumstances we have reviewed our business plan for this year and next. Our current priorities are to fulfil our statutory duties, to support local authorities in maintaining high standards and to assist the government in developing and implementing any new arrangements they may choose to put in place.
In the meantime, the local standards framework still exists and standards committees and monitoring officers have an obligation to keep the system operating.
In order to assist you we will:
- Continue to provide advice and information to those who phone or write to us with queries about the standards regime via our enquiries helpline, monitoring officer helpline or press helpline. We will respond immediately where we can by telephone or in writing by post or email.
- Update our guidance on the framework to make it easier to use.
There will be changes to the content of the guidance where sections may be out of date, inaccurate or incorrect. We have received several suggestions from stakeholders and will incorporate these in the guidance where appropriate.
The format of the guidance is changing to make it easier to use and more helpful. It will highlight all statutory requirements and provide a link to the relevant legislation.
We are not proposing to produce any other new guidance products, unless a specific need is identified. All revised guidance will only be available via our website.
- Produce an updated case review.
As a result of a request from the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors, and to assist the standards community as a whole, we are updating the Case Review 2007 to reflect cases decided by the First Tier and Upper Tribunals since the Case Review was last updated in 2008.
- Continue to carry out investigations referred to us by standards committees.
See the article towards the end of this bulletin on the factors we take into account when deciding whether to accept cases for investigation.
- Maintain existing relationships with key stakeholder organisations.
Standards for England will continue to provide support to those in the regulated and standards community who have requested our help with ethical issues.
- Meet requests for staff to give presentations or attend training events.
We will continue to provide staff and material for presentations and training evens where we are requested to attend and where it fits in with our current business plan.
- Maintain our website as a resource to support standards committees.
We will carry out routine maintenance of our website and the guidance we provide on it. We have published our Annual Report and Annual Accounts online, but we will not be printing these publications.
