Standards Board | Local assessment | About local assessment

Local assessment and changes to the standards framework

What is happening?

New arrangements for local government are taking shape so we have created this dedicated section on our website to keep you informed of the changes and what they will mean for local authorities and the Standards Board for England’s role.

We will also be keeping you up-to-date with our progress in developing guidance for local authorities and helping the government to develop regulations to support the system.

The key changes to the framework are:

Standards committees will be responsible for receiving allegations and deciding whether any action needs to be taken (referred to as ‘local assessment’).
Standards committees must be chaired by an independent member.
Standards committees will report periodically to the Standards Board.
Standards committees will be allowed to enter into joint working arrangements with other standards committees.
The Standards Board will be responsible for monitoring and ensuring the effectiveness of local arrangements, including supporting authorities which are experiencing difficulties and driving up their performance.

Regulations need to be drafted to prescribe how some of these provisions will work in practice, not least local assessment and monitoring arrangements. Local assessment is on course to come into effect in May 2008 and the Standards Board is conscious of the need to have the legislation and our guidance in place before then.

Standards Board guidance

To support local authorities, the Standards Board will be producing a range of comprehensive guidance on the framework for local authorities.

Although we are currently preparing this guidance based on what we anticipate the regulations will contain, we need the final regulations to be in place before we can finish and publish it. This is to gain the important details we need to make sure the guidance is correct, and so give standards committees the certainty they need in preparing effectively for their new roles.

The government is working hard to have the regulations in place as soon as possible and, as mentioned above, we will keep you updated.

In the meantime, this website will provide as much information as possible to help in preparing for the new roles and responsibilities.

The published guidance will focus on four areas:

the role and make-up of standards committees
local assessment and how it will operate
local investigations
local determinations

Keeping you updated

We will post regular updates on our Latest news page on any developments to the regulations, guidance and our work generally that relate to the new standards framework.

If you have an enquiry about the proposed changes, please email enquiries@standardsboard.gov.uk or phone 0845 078 8181.