01 December 2006
Local authority statutory officers must maintain direct access to the management board, participants in a joint workshop agreed this week.
Senior officials attended the 'Exploring the role of statutory officers' workshop, run by CIPFA, the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and the Improvement and Development Agency.
They discussed how the role of the three statutory officers – the chief executive, monitoring officer and 'section 151' finance officer – should evolve to continue to make a positive contribution to good governance and high performance.
Responding to recent concerns that the finance role was being 'downgraded' by being excluded from some management boards, local government ombudsman Tony Redmond said that a board position was not the only way the role could be effectively carried out.
'There are other statutory officers not on the board,' he said. 'There needs to be strict and clear reporting lines from the executive board to finance officers and other statutory officers. Statutory officers must have unfettered discretion to give their professional advice.'
But Mike Kendall, county secretary for West Sussex County Council, disagreed. Board membership was the most important requirement in fulfilling his statutory role as monitoring officer, he said. 'Having that dialogue with the board and members seems to me to be most essential and vital,' he said.
Kendall went on to raise a few eyebrows by arguing that professional qualifications could hamper, rather than promote, a statutory officer's access to the management board.
'If we insist finance directors have an accountancy qualification, that could push the chief executive into the view that section 151 officers should be second or third-tier managers, not on the board of directors,' he said. 'I would trade qualifications for access to the board any day.'
Chief executives wanted the broadest range of expertise on their boards, said Kendall. There was a danger that the current insistence that finance officers had an accountancy qualification restricted that flexibility. Finance directors should be competent enough to know when they needed to ask a qualified accountant for assistance.
Steve Freer, CIPFA chief executive, disagreed. 'I can't begin to buy the argument that professional skills and qualifications are some sort of optional extra,' he told Public Finance.
'Of course, boards need finance directors who can think and act strategically and bring creativity and innovation to problem-solving. But their advice must always be grounded in best professional practice and standards.'
PFdec2006
