Governance Tells Councils What They Must Do. Culture Helps Them Do It.
I recently had the privilege of speaking at the AMO & LLG Monitoring Officer Conference 2026.
As well as delivering my own session, I spent the day listening and learning from experts working at the heart of local government governance.
One of the sessions I attended was The Role of the Monitoring Officer in Unitary Councils, delivered by Bethan Evans of Governance Training and Consultancy Ltd.
During her presentation, Bethan briefly mentioned that town and parish councils are autonomous authorities. It wasn't the main focus of her talk, but it was one of those passing comments that stayed with me.
As I listened, something clicked.
Over the last few years, I've worked with councils across the country. Whether I'm delivering strategy workshops, civility and respect training or supporting councils through periods of change, I often hear the same sentence.
"We've reported it to the Monitoring Officer."
Then there is a sense of frustration around what is or isn’t being done. However, I didn’t fully understand the autonomous authorities and what it means. So I went down a rabbit hole!
Governance and culture are partners
Monitoring Officers have an essential role in local government.
They help protect good governance, ensure the correct processes are followed and oversee standards matters when complaints arise.
At the same time, town and parish councils are autonomous authorities. They employ their own staff, make their own decisions and are responsible for governing themselves.
That means there is a natural boundary around what a Monitoring Officer can do.
Their role is governance.
Many of the challenges councils experience are about something different.
They're about people.
What I see when I visit councils
When I arrive at a council, people rarely begin by talking about legislation.
They tell me about communication.
About meetings that have become difficult.
About relationships that have become strained.
About officers who no longer feel heard.
About councillors who genuinely care about their communities but have stopped hearing one another.
Nobody wakes up wanting to create conflict.
Most people are trying to do the right thing from their own perspective.
Sometimes they simply need a different way of working together.
Governance creates the framework
The Code of Conduct exists for an important reason.
It provides clear expectations about behaviour and offers a route for dealing with potential breaches.
That framework matters.
But like any framework, it has a particular purpose.
It isn't designed to rebuild trust after a difficult year.
It isn't there to help a team communicate more effectively.
It isn't intended to explore why a council keeps finding itself in conflict.
Those are different conversations.
Why this matters
For many clerks, the Monitoring Officer is the only independent person they can turn to outside their own council.
That makes complete sense.
Yet I wonder whether some of the challenges reaching Monitoring Officers aren't really governance questions at all.
Perhaps they're culture questions.
Questions like:
How do we disagree well?
How do we rebuild trust after conflict?
How do we create meetings where everyone feels able to contribute?
How do we support Chairs to lead confidently?
How do we help officers and councillors understand one another's pressures?
Those aren't questions of law.
They're questions of leadership, communication and organisational culture.
Where Council Culture fits
Listening to Bethan's presentation gave me language for something I'd been trying to articulate for some time.
Monitoring Officers protect the governance of councils.
Council Culture helps councils build the relationships, communication and confidence that allow good governance to flourish.
I don't see these as separate worlds.
I see them as complementary.
Governance tells councils what they must do.
Council Culture helps them become the kind of organisation that can actually do it.
One creates accountability.
The other builds capability.
Both are essential.
Starting the conversation earlier
By the time a formal complaint is made, relationships have often been under strain for quite some time.
That's nobody's fault.
It's simply the point at which a governance process becomes necessary.
What interests me is everything that happens before that point.
The conversations.
The misunderstandings.
The assumptions.
The pressure.
The moments where a different conversation, a stronger relationship or a better understanding of how people respond under stress might have changed the direction of travel.
That's where I believe the greatest opportunity lies.
Not instead of good governance.
Alongside it.
Helping councils create cultures where good governance is easier because people are communicating well, leading well and working together with a shared sense of purpose.
That's the space Council Culture is here to support.