Local Code of Governance

Principle D – Intervention

9.1 The Council achieves its intended outcomes by providing a mixture of legal, regulatory, and practical courses of action. Determining the right mix of these is a critically important strategic choice that the Council has to make to ensure intended outcomes are achieved.  They need robust decision-making mechanisms to ensure that their defined outcomes can be achieved in a way that provides the best trade-off between the various types of resource inputs while still enabling effective and efficient operations.  Decisions made need to be reviewed frequently to ensure that achievement of outcomes is optimised.

9.2 The Council demonstrates this by:

  • Ensuring decision makers receive objective and rigorous analysis of available options including risks.
  • Considering feedback from citizens and service users when making decisions about service provision.
  • Establishing and implementing robust planning and control.
  • Engaging with all stakeholders in determining how services should be planned and delivered.
  • Ensuring arrangements are flexible and capable of adapting to changing circumstances.
  • Establishing key performance indicators.
  • Ensuring sufficient capacity exists to review service provision regularly.
  • Preparing budgets in accordance with objectives, strategies and the medium term financial plan.
  • Drawing up realistic estimates of revenue and capital expenditure.
  • Ensuring the Medium Term Financial Strategy balances service priorities, affordability and other resources constraints.
  • Ensuring the Medium Term Financial Strategy sets the context for ongoing decisions on service delivery.
  • Ensuring the budget process is all inclusive.
  • Ensuring the achievement of social value through service planning and commissioning.
  • Ensuring Key Decisions are included in the Council’s Forward Plan prior to decisions being made.

9.3 This value is specifically upheld in the following examples:

  • Budget and Medium-Term Financial Strategy and Financial Governance Framework
  • Procurement Strategy
  • Risk Management Framework
  • Complaint Policy and Procedure
  • Quarterly performance reporting to Cabinet