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The Public Sector Executive Podcast is the new podcast bringing you closer to the public sector leaders in the UK. Covering everything from the environment to the economy to transport, our podcast will bring you the latest news, views and insight from the people responsible for shaping the country's future.
If you're a counsellor and you're wondering how to make ends meet on your council budget and you're reducing services for people that you know, need your services, saying, actually, let's spend some money on me and on my training is really difficult if you haven't got the influencing skills to be able to sit at that top table. And this is as award counsel, not just the leaders and the cabinet members or portfolio holders, you're not going to be able to get that solution. But I think Dloc should fund councillor training. So it takes the concerns, of money out of the hands of the council.
This is the public sector executive podcast, bringing you views, insight and conversation from leaders across the public sector, presented by Dan Benn.
Today I am joined by Councillor Liz Green, who has 20 years of councillor experience, including some time as leader of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, whilst also working with the local government association. So thank you for joining me, Liz.
Not every council gives its councillors the same amount of training nationwide
Obviously today we're going to be talking about skills training for counsellors at the minute. What kind of training do counsellors need?
So counsellors come in from all walks of life and you've got people with a lot of business experience and things like that, or maybe they haven't got that particular type of experience, but being a counsellor, I like to say, is very different to anything anybody's ever done before in their life. So even if you've been highly successful in business, you're still going to need to learn some new skills. So, things like negotiating and conflict resolution, we often find ourselves in the middle of things, as councillors, influencing. So councils can't do anything by themselves because they need to work with the public sector, the private sector and with, the voluntary sector. And you need to be able to influence those in a different way because you are not the direct boss, you can't tell them what to do. Things like strategic thinking. Some people find very difficult financial skills that they need. Community engagement, how to reach those people who are the silent majority, those that don't come forward automatically. How do you get their voices heard in what you're doing? And how do you actively listen to all of the people instead of just those loud people? Relationship building, officer member relationships, relationships with your businesses, your community. All of that takes very specialist skills in a political and a, local authority environment, which is different to how you might have done it in business. And then there's obviously all the training around the service areas, children's adults, being a corporate parent, finances, planning, licencing, waste services, highways, parks, cultural services, leisure, industry. There's a lot of different services that councils offer and you need to have a basic understanding of pretty much all that your council offers.
So we know that not every council gives its councillors the same amount of training nationwide. How much training do councillors currently get and what kind of does the best level look like? The best practise?
So it does vary, I think, dramatically. and I'd like to give a shout out to all democratic services officers who try their best to help train their counsellors. I'll be honest, some counsellors don't take up the training that is offered to them. some councillors come in thinking that they know everything already and that they don't need training in these areas. So it's not to criticise the democratic services officer teams that are working up and down the country to train new councillors or add to the skills of returning councillors after an election. But I think the problem comes that they will often have to use in house people, so they'll have to use their own staff to be able to deliver that training, which might not be the best way to do it for some areas and, for some topic areas, particularly those soft skills like influencing and negotiating conflict management, they're often better delivered by external training providers. And then it comes down to having a budget to be able to do that.
You mentioned having a budget to be able to deliver the training. Why do some councils not give their counsellors the right level of training, as maybe they should? Or why do some counsellors not take up that training?
I think it's really difficult with the levels of austerity and the cuts that we've had to local government, which I know you've covered numerous times on this podcast, so I won't go into the details behind that. But if you're a councillor and you're wondering how to make ends meet on your council budget and you're reducing services for people that, you know, need your services, saying, actually, let's spend some money on me and on my training is really difficult. what I think would be good is if they included some of their HR departments. I mentioned democratic services. They are often or member services, some council call them, they're often left to do it, but they're not training experts. It's one of a multitude of roles that they fulfil for the council. So it might be a good idea to include the HR, ah, services that your council will have because they are experts in continuous professional development and training of all the members of staff. That they have there.
So when this training doesn't get delivered, when these skills aren't developed by members of the council, how does the council operations suffer? how does this impact the way that the council runs day to day?
I think it has many different impacts. So I think the first one is that we need to remember, as councillors, we are essentially leaders of place. So our communities rely and look to us to lead that place. I mentioned that you have to have influencing skills. You have to be able to work with the other public sector, police, health service, schools and your local university, everything. If you don't have those skills, you're not really able to collaborate and convene meetings, which is the role of a counsellor, and get them on board to do things. So, an example. If you've got an anti social behaviour issue in your area, you need to work with your youth service team, which might be in a different council to yours. If you're a district, it might be in the county. You need to work, possibly with the youth offending team, certainly with the police, probably in your council, with the parks department, or the highways or economic development, probably with housing. So what you're trying to do is to bring all of those different groups together to look for a solution to a problem that your community has told you about. If you haven't got the influencing skills to be able to sit at that top table, and this is as a ward council, not just the leaders and the cabinet members or portfolio holders, you're not going to be able to get that solution for your council and for your community. The second thing that I think is really important is councillor retention. So we know it's better if we can keep some existing councillors and get some new counsellors in. That's the best mix you can have on a council because you've got those new ideas and, fresh ideas coming through and you've got that voice of experience to be able to help guide those new people. But if you don't look after your councillors and support them in things like how to do conflict resolution, how to be more resilient, because it's not a nice place. Sometimes being a councillor, when you're being shouted at and you're being told that you're in it for the money and you're thinking, what money? What money are you talking about that I'm in it for? I earned more before I became a counsellor 20 odd years ago. But you're being shouted at and told you don't care. You've got to get personal resilience to that. And if you're not helped to do that by training, by support, mentoring, coaching, all of those different aspects, why would you stand again four years later? So then they drop out because they haven't felt supported in the work that they do and then you've got too much of a turnover in your council, and amongst your councillors and you're not getting enough through.
I don't know if more councillor training would have helped with some 114 notices
I don't know if more councillor training would have helped with some of the 114 notice, section 114 notice we've had. Now, I am not saying that those that have issued section 114 did or didn't train their counsellors, however. Certainly there was an element of lack of scrutiny and lack of understanding of governance procedures by all councillors in some of those councils, which meant these issues were not flagged as early as they could have been, had those questions been being asked and taken seriously at the time. This is. Again, it's not a criticism of the individual councils. lack of funding has led to a lot of the 114 notices. But could some of the issues been flagged earlier as a warning system? If the councillors had received more training on how to do that, on how to ask the right questions, how to scrutinise, how to get to the detail behind some of the decisions that the cabinet were taking or the chief officers were taking, maybe it would have helped to some extent reduce the pressures on some of these departments. For my own counsel, back over ten years ago, we had an Ofsted inspection of our children's services and we went into inadequate. Now, as councillors, we thought we had a good children's service and it came as a shock to us and that was a real wake up call, that we hadn't been taking our scrutiny of children's services and our ability to look at it all as well as we could have done. Our corporate parenting was not what where it should have been. Fortunately, Ofsted didn't find, any child had suffered because of this. But it could have been the case that children had suffered. We redesigned everything to make sure that everybody understood their corporate parenting role. Everyone understood how children's services worked so that we could make sure. And I think if we'd been doing that before the Ofsted, we'd have been able to pick up some of those issues and maybe not fallen into an inadequate rating. So that's where I think councillor training comes in and councillor support to pull.
Most councils are struggling financially around the country
It back to, a little bit to what you said before about those section 114 notices and how most councils are struggling financially around the country. We've seen this and then at the start of the year we had the chancellor saying that actually it's a, productivity issue. Do you think that whilst that drew a lot of ire, there was a lot of people saying, it isn't a productivity issue, we just need more money, actually. Do you think that if the right skills are in place and, that funding comes in, the productivity will go up anyway?
Yeah. So, I was a councillor before we started austerity in 2010. it never felt like we had a lot of money to start with. So I think initially we did do some improvements in councils. We looked more at our budgets and we scrutinised them more. And just because we spent it last year didn't mean they were going to get to spend it this year in a certain department, which I think was helpful. We also mean that we did more transformation, which is buzzword at the moment, but improving services, looking at how we used it, how we used our resources of people and assets and buildings, etcetera. So I think there was some really good work that went on. It's gone way too far now. We just simply cannot afford as councils to keep operating. And whoever returns after the general election is going to have to address that, without a doubt. But, is it all about productivity and governance? I think that's got an element to play. Like I said, I think that had the councillors been supported in some of those that have issued 114 notices and some of those that are close to now, issuing them, to be able to ask the questions in advance, to really scrutinise and felt the confidence to scrutinise, even as an opposition counsellor or a backbench administration councillor, it may have influenced to some extent. I don't want to say it would have prevented it because I'm not sure that that is the case. But where the decisions were being made on, say, regeneration, actually, they could have looked at their risk register a little bit more, questioned the risk register, looked at those risks given the global financial situations, that kind of. But you can't just expect the person who stepped in off the street, which is literally what we are as councillors, to understand and be able to do that because some may have some experience in it, but most won't have the right experience. Getting your head around budgets is quite difficult to start with, to then start to be able to question very senior officers who've got many years experience and we want more young councillors, we want more women councillors, actually, to be able to go in and go. I don't think you're right. And I think you need to look at this again. It's really quite hard if you've not got that support there. So councils where they've got a supportive leadership team, both the officer side and the member side, actually, those councillors can do it. Where it's more silo working. It's hard, you know, it's hard not being a council. It is. You're trying to sort out, an issue, dog poo and, you know, potholes. You know, to get into that strategic level of thinking about the investments that your council's making is difficult.
You mentioned those issues that councils are trying to sort like potholes and things like that.
There are numerous different levels of being a councillor. Are the skills different from being a more major council
Obviously, there are numerous different levels of being a councillor. There are numerous different levels of local government. We know this. To add onto that a little bit with what kind of training they require. Are the skills different from being a more major council? Are they the same core skills as you go through?
I think some of them are core skills. So all councils will give training to their licencing and their planning committees, if they have those, to those that sit on it. That's a requirement to be able to sit on it. Councils will give mostly safeguarding training, safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. They'll give some cyber security training, GDPR, things like that, that are very basic training because you're part of, a system, I think, as you progress through. So if you come in as a ward counsellor, some of that initial training is initial budget understanding. If you go on to become the finance portfolio holder or the chair of the audit committee, clearly you're going to need more training in more detail. But everyone needs a basic understanding of the finance. Everyone should have a basic understanding of the risk registers, the internal audit and fraud work you do, the overarching services that are provided. Now, I've been a councillor 20 odd years. Still, occasionally it comes up to me and someone asks me a question, I go, that's a council service. I didn't know we ran that because it's something very small. the one that shocked me a few years ago was, I didn't know we ran coroner services until there was an issue. It never come up. So, yeah, all these kinds of things, there are always new things that come up, but the big issues. So, you know, I mentioned housing, highways, waste parks, culture, leisure, education, adults. Children's planning, I think affects everybody and shouldn't be just restricted to the planning committee, because you need to know the system even if you don't sit on it. Contracts, insourcing, outsourcing how you commission what your procurement is, are, ah, you adding social value to your procurement contracts? There's a lot of different things in there. So I think what I would like to see councillors do is develop individual learning journeys. So if you come in as a new counsellor and you're a ward councillor or a division for counties, there'll be certain skills that you need and then if you step up, there will be more. And if you are, somebody who's come in and said, actually, I would like at some point to take on further responsibilities in the council because some councillors just want to stay in their ward, do the work for their community in their ward and that's fine. Some want to progress up and, ah, potentially come leaders one day. So they need different levels and in the same way as for a member of staff, of an employee, your manager would talk to you about your training needs and opportunities and HR would get involved in that. We need the same dedication to counsellors because it will be different. And it depends what skills you come in with. As I said, if you've come in with some influencing and negotiating skills, if you're fairly resilient already, you might not need those aspects, but you might need more work on understanding and active listening. I've met many a successful business person, who doesn't actively listen to what other people are saying. Cause they already think they know the answer. So there are different skills for different people.
With lack of skills training, how does this negatively impact communities
You gave me a minute or two ago a big long list of all the things that councils run, whether it's education, social care or potholes like we touched on before. Now they have one thing in common in that they are relied upon by communities, the counsellors relied upon by the communities. With this sometimes lack of skills training, how does this negatively impact communities?
I think counsellors don't always know how to get the results that they want. So I gave the example of, if you've got antisocial behaviour in an area or in a park, if you don't know how to work with people to create win win situations. So I'm not saying the police wouldn't want to do anything about antisocial behaviour, but they have their own priorities, they have their own difficulties and things that they are working on. So you've got to be able to create. How does it win for both of us? There are techniques that you can learn, a lot of it's experience, but there are techniques that you can learn on how to look for that and how to then bring that about, how to convene a meeting. So if you want to look at an issue for your community, you need to bring together all the different stakeholders, which might include elements of your community. You need to know when to bring them in and, when to talk to your officers or your partners in the public sector or in the private sector and walk into a meeting that you've asked somebody to arrange for you, where you have senior health police, council officers, and then have the confidence to chair that meeting and say, right, you're going to do that. You're going to do that. You're going to do that. That sounds like I'm telling them what to do. But, yeah, you've worked through some of the issues and then you've gone, how do we do this? Right at the end, you're going to do that. It's difficult. And I keep coming back to, if you're not able to do it and you can't always get a solution, there might not be a solution that suits the community, because not everybody in the community is not one homogeneous lump. people have different views. So some people might want you to do something and some people might want you to do something else. But if you can make sure you can talk to all the different people and listen to what they say, listen to the experts that we have at our disposal within the council, in our officer corps, and then you can come up with a solution may or may not be perfect. It may or may not please most people. You are performing your role as a leader of place. Secondary to that is your individual casework. So when a resident contacts you about an issue, you need to be able to make sure you've looked at your time management to follow it through. You've got to have a casework system that, you know, they email in or phone in or come to a surgery, you then have a process. And that process will be different in every council because some will have specific processes, some will just have more fluid processes, but you need to know what that is and how to do it and how to follow up. So you need to manage your time. You're often working, you may have family or other commitments outside of council, so you've got to balance all of that as well. So you can see there's loads of different aspects. Nobody gets it perfectly. None of us as councillors are perfect and we will all make mistakes, but we need to try and perform our best. And to do that, you've got to be supported.
Dloc should fund councillor training, says Dave Offsell
To round off the conversation, then we've spoken about a lot. Everything to do with the skills that counsellors need and, the training they require. But for those counsels that aren't quite getting there with the training, how can they go about rectifying the issue? How can they go about making sure their counsellors do get the right training?
An obvious starting point is things like making sure you're up to date with those offers. So the LGA, the LGIU, apse, some of the regional organisations, they all have offers of training and they all use trainers. And, I work for several of them, so, you know, there's my conflict of interest on that. But they will all have different offers available. I think sitting and speaking about what your counsellors need is really important. So if you can sit down between the councillors and your head of democratic services, an HR training person, you know, whoever it is, and say, what is it that you need? And then you can collect it together, do you need chairs training? They all put on chairs training in different guises and what have you. Well, that's fine. Some people need chairs training and there's always. I've done chairs training, at my council, even though I also, run a course in it for other councils, because you can always learn new things, but ask them what they need, know what's available out there in the market, which is not unreasonably priced, I don't think, but. So you can make the most of whatever budget you maybe do have. But then I'd like to finish on something that may be controversial, because that's always a good way to finish, isn't it? So I think the government should take more interest in this. and d luck should fund. I'm not normally in favour of ring fencing from Dloc, because I think councils should choose what they want to do, but I think Dloc should fund councillor training. So it takes the concerns of money out of the hands of the council. It doesn't say you must do x, Y and z. It says here is a pot of money that you can use for councillor training. Then I think of log should monitor it. So the office of Local Government has been set up, that is monitoring lots of different parts. Part of their remit, is the warning system. So they are looking for outliers statistically. And I think councillor training could be one of those outliers. If d luck are providing, say, 501,000 pounds per year per councillor, and that council then has to report in what it was spent on. If it's not being spent on governance risk audit training support, that's a red flag to me that that council isn't supporting its councillors to do their job of scrutinising decision making and what officers are doing or their senior members are doing. So I think the final solution should be deal up, choose an amount per councillor, give that money to a council, tell them they will then have to report on it. And oflog should put that out into the public domain, not Dave did this course and sue did that course, but that these courses were done by their counsellors and I think that would give a reassurance and would help because it also then normalised it. So those councillors who think they know everything and don't need to do training, suddenly the officers are going, yeah, but we're going to be monitored on it, we're going to be checked up on. So therefore, then they're going to do the training and they probably do need to do some of the training. So it's sort of got a double whammy. So that's my suggestion for how we rectify it in the long term.
That's a very strong point you've made about the Dloc funding and especially with the monitoring from offlog, because that's one of the things that I've taken from the conversation as well, is that I've written a little diagram on my notes that says skills leads to confidence, confidence leads to accountability of yourself or of other counsellors, and accountability inevitably leads to improvement. So, yeah, I think, yeah, it's a good point. If the government wants to see improvement, then support with that.
and actually, for government, it's a really quite inexpensive way of getting that m improvement because you only have to invest a few million in it, as opposed to a few billion that you have to invest in other ways. So I think it's a really good value for money. I have raised this, I was fortunate enough to be in a meeting with the chief executive of Offlog and I did raise this. I have no idea if it will be taken forward as an idea, but it doesn't work, Offlog monitoring it, unless government also fund it. I just want to make that clear.
Thank you very much for joining me. It's been a really insightful conversation.
Lovely. Thanks. Dad.
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