Maintaining ethical cultures: Self-regulation in english local government

Abstract

The establishment of an ethical framework to govern councillor conduct has been an important and controversial aspect of local government reform in England. Both the detail of the statutory code and the associated system of enforcement have been subject to criticism. As a result of some of these problems future reform and policy is likely to rely to a greater extent on local authorities and their standards committees creating a culture of ethical governance. This paper uses evidence gathered from case studies in eight English local authorities to describe the methods they use to support cultures of ethical governance.

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was funded by the Standards Board for England. I would like to thank the other members of the research team: Lorraine Johnston; Gerry Stoker and Francesca Gains and also Gary Hickey and Paul Hoey at the Standards Board for England and two anonymous referees. The content of the paper is the responsibility of the author alone.

Notes

1 These figures are available at: http://www.standardsboard.co.uk/Casesummaries/MonthlyStatisticalDigest (accessed 21 November 2006).

2 These categories are suggested in Ashworth et al. (2002).