Corporate Peer Challenge 2019
Earlier this year we invited the Local Government Association (LGA) to carry out a corporate peer review of the council. All councils are given the opportunity to have one of these reviews every 4-5 years as part of a local government-led approach to improvement and mutual support. A small team of officers from a variety of councils, plus a lead Member, spent four days talking to a wide range of people connected to the council, providing challenge, and sharing their knowledge and experience.
Each peer review covers the following core questions:
- Understanding of the local place and priority setting: does the council understand its local context and place and use that to inform a clear vision and set of priorities?
- Leadership of Place: does the council provide effective leadership of place through its elected members, officers and constructive relationships and partnerships with external stakeholders?
- Financial planning and viability: does the council have a financial plan in place to ensure long term viability and is there evidence that it is being implemented successfully?
- Organisational leadership and governance: is there effective political and managerial leadership supported by good governance and decision-making arrangements that respond to key challenges and enable change and transformation to be implemented?
- Capacity to deliver: is organisational capacity aligned with priorities and does the council influence, enable and leverage external capacity to focus on agreed outcomes?
In addition to these questions, we asked the peer review team to provide their observations on the following:
“The council is agreeing its Borough Plan in February 2019 so is keen to focus on how well set up it is to deliver against the plan, especially in relation to the way it prioritises within the Borough Plan, and invites the peer team to reflect particularly on how well set we are to deliver the level of partnership working required to make the ambition of a Borough, rather than Corporate, plan a reality by the end of the Plan period”.
We wanted to use this as an opportunity to tell the story the progress Haringey has made and to have an accurate representation of the challenges we face. The peer review is also a useful reminder of what we need to do to ensure that we’re in the best shape to be able to deliver our ambitious plans in this context.
The findings of the peer review team are set out in the report below. The council will respond with an action plan that will be considered at the Cabinet meeting taking place on 9 July 2019.