A survey by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy has revealed the influential role of chief finance officers in local councils. 92% of CFOs carry out the role of finance director and over four fifths are members of their authority’s corporate management team. Just over three quarters report directly to the chief executive.These findings show that in most cases the CFO is at the heart of the council’s decision making process and is able to exercise influence within the top team and throughout the organization. This allows the CFO to help the team to maintain an effective grip on the organisation’s finances and its underlying financial management practices and arrangements.

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Local authorities can change the face of the environment across the country according to the Local Government Association’s Environment board, which has launched the Greening Communities Campaign in an attempt to demonstrate the importance of council leadership in environmental management. The campaign is designed to highlight ways that councils can be creative in delivering projects to improve environmental quality and is linked to wider priorities such as reducing crime and improving health.Authorities will be given the chance to use the toolkits offered by the campaign to run local greening communities initiatives, to promote grassroots projects and to be inspired by case studies of best practice that are set out in vision documents that will available on the Greening Communities’ website.

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Local authorities’ role in scrutinising health services has helped to bring about an increasingly constructive and collaborative approach between health bodies and local councils in achieving public health outcomes, according to new research evaluating the effectiveness of local government’s health scrutiny function.The study found many positive benefits. Its findings are largely based on survey evidence from local authorities and health bodies and have been released as the first phase of a three-year evaluative research programme by a team from the University of Manchester as part of the Centre for Public Scrutiny’s Health Scrutiny Support Programme.

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