Local Governance Toolkit

The original Governance Toolkit was created in October 2005 by a group of Monitoring Officers and Solicitors from the East Midlands Branch of the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors. It was designed primarily as an aide memoire for Parish and Town Council Clerks to help ensure good governance.

Successive versions have been produced in the intervening years and a survey was carried out in 2017. In early 2021 The Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) commissioned Hoey Ainscough Associates to conduct a survey on improving professional standards.

At the 2021 SLCC Practitioners' Conference, Paul Hoey, along with colleagues from SLCC, Lawyers in Local Government (LLG) and the Association of Democratic Services (ADSO) launched the new Local Governance Toolkit, providing a vital resource available not only to parish, town and community council officers in England, but, for the first time, to local council Democratic Services Officers. The Toolkit, which is only available to SLCC members, provides information on a range of issues including governance, roles and responsibilities, public engagement, managing information and elections, along with template policies, protocols and forms.