Commissioners

Lead Commissioner

As Lead Commissioner, you will be responsible for driving improvement at an authority where a best value intervention is in place.

You will be the public face of the intervention and will lead a team of Commissioners to provide direction and leadership to the authority throughout its improvement journey. In practice, we expect that in most cases this will involve working collaboratively with the authority and providing challenge and advice to support effective decision making.

The terms of the intervention, along with your role and responsibilities, will be set out in the Directions issued by the Secretary of State. This will include any functions of the authority which the Secretary of State has removed and passed onto the Commissioners.

You will ensure that progress is made at pace and will provide regular assurance through progress reports, typically every six months, to the Secretary of State. These reports must set out any recommendations to change the scope of the intervention, including the appointment of additional Commissioners. Expectation around reporting will be set out in your letter of appointment which you will receive with the Directions.

Interventions usually last for a few years (typically three years) and you will need to be highly committed throughout to turning around the authority and ensuring it complies with its best value duty.

Assistant Commissioner

As Assistant Commissioner, you will work closely with the Lead Commissioner to drive the best value intervention and deliver improvement at the authority.

As with the Lead Commissioner, the terms of the intervention as well as the parameters of your work, will be set out in the Directions issued by the Secretary of State. Where appropriate, you will be assigned individual role expectations – for example, you may hold executive function over a specific area such as finance or governance. This will be set out in your letter of appointment.

Commissioners are accountable to the Secretary of State in that they have been nominated by him and expected to report regularly him, generally in the form of a report as well as meetings where appropriate.