Governance Reviews costs

Question

Does anyone have any experience of Governance Reviews ? If so how much do they cost ?

Answer 1

It all depends on what the governance review is covering, who is carrying it out and to what extent. Is it a charity, or just a PC . In fact each PC carries out a governance review every year at their annual meeting where all of their policies, standing orders, committees, appointees etc are examined and amended if required at no cost whatsoever. If outside consultants are sought because of legal questions or matters then the cost is down to whatever the accepted quote from a third party charges ( and PC agrees)

Comments

I was thinking of the one NALC carry out or rather their local body I know three local Parish Councils have had one and in one case it had an electrifying effect and a lot crawled out from under the woodwork

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Your internal auditor should be doing this as part of our internal audit process each year although of course it does depend upon what you've asked him/her to do.
Our county office of NALC offer an internal audit service and the cost depends upon the size of the council so you'll need to ask them.  It includes not just reviewing accounting processes and procedures but ensuring appropriate policies are in place, risk assessments, PAYE procedures, that expenditure (and payment) is approved by council and just about anything else that a governance procedure should address.

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This is what I’m talking about
https://www.mountsorrelparishcouncil.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/review-of-mountsorrel-pc-governance-final-draft-23-4-20.pdf

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Jules looks like a lot of cut and paste information which flannels out what should be a factual report. Most consultations we had to have were of the same style and several thousands in the getting. But there again I'm an old cynic and tend to know a con when I see one. Too many people are impressed by such reports which, when analysed can be set down in one or two A4 sheets and too many councillors are wrongly impressed by long winded verbosity and accept unthinkingly because of the price tag applied.

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Humm - first paragraph I read at random had a spelling mistake.
As someone once said to me: the only person who reads a document longer than 3 pages is the author.