“Grenfell, Windrush, infected blood, Post Office Horizon IT – each scandal very different in nature, but all with a catastrophic impact on human lives.” The opening gambit of a new report pulls no punches as it seeks to highlight common early warning signs that could ensure public bodies avoid adding their name to this unfortunate list.

The report, Recognising and responding to early warning signs in public sector bodies, published this week by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) lays bare a string of common threads among public sector organisations that it says have failed the public in recent years.

They include a failure to listen to and act on concerns raised, a failure to learn lessons from similar incidents and a failure to identify and share emerging risks. The report also cites a failure to identify and address emerging issues before they escalated and a failure to learn from previous mistakes or similar incidents and failures. 

Stop failures before they happen

“While addressing failures in public life requires clear and unambiguous law to sanction misconduct, it is equally important to focus on what public sector bodies can do to stop these failures from happening in the first place,” Chair of the CSPL Doug Chalmers says in his foreword.

The report includes 20 points for reflection – questions designed to prompt leaders to consider the effectiveness of their organisations’ processes and culture, and which employees can use to hold their leaders to account.

“The purpose of this review is to support public sector bodies to put in place the processes needed to recognise the early warning signs of emerging problems and to facilitate a culture where speaking up about concerns and learning from mistakes are seen as a personal duty and are valued by everyone in the organisation,” Chalmers continues. 

“Our aspiration is better outcomes for the public by mitigating the risk of harm, saving taxpayers’ money and leading to the more effective delivery of public services.” 

Practical examples

The review includes examples of how organisations have sought to identify and respond to the early warning signs of emerging problems based on insights from leaders and practitioners.

In its submission to CSPL’s consultation on accountability within public bodies launched last March, ICAEW warned that greater emphasis was needed on duties to exercise reasonable care and diligence and to look after public money and resources.

ICAEW also said that parliamentarians, stakeholder groups and the public need to be more engaged, warning that formal accountability events such as results presentations and AGMs were missing, a point quoted in CSPL’s review. ICAEW also said a financial reporting review panel for public bodies would strengthen accountability.

Public governance code

ICAEW believes that corporate governance needs to underpin how public bodies operate and has recommended a public governance code to bring core guidance into one place. Public bodies would be required to ‘comply or explain’ how they have applied the code, while an ‘air accident investigation’-type body should routinely examine governance failures. 

Alison Ring, ICAEW Director, Public Sector and Taxation, says: “ICAEW welcomes the publication of this report from the CSPL on recognising and responding to early warning signs in public sector bodies, and the importance the Committee places on strengthening corporate governance in public bodies, building on the ethical foundations of the Nolan Principles.

“The report unfortunately highlights how inquiries into Windrush, NHS maternity, Grenfell Tower, and infected blood identified many of the same failings in each case. This included, but was not limited to, not listening to employees and the public, not investigating properly, an overly defensive organisation culture and not learning from past mistakes.”

Open culture needed

“We concur with the report’s conclusions and its stress on the effectiveness of boards, ethical leadership, accountability, transparency, risk management, organisational culture and learning from experience,” she continues. “Probably the most important recommendation is the need to build an open culture where people feel comfortable raising issues in the knowledge they will be taken seriously.

“Our call for a public governance code to apply across the whole of the public sector would help make it easier for public servants to know what their responsibilities are, but – as this report makes clear – actions are more important than words if public bodies are to prevent failures from occurring in the first place, or to deal with them effectively when they occur.”