Corporate Peer Challenge 2024

We are pleased to issue the full report from the Local Government Association Peer Challenge which took place in November 2024.

Experienced local government professionals spent a week with Harborough District Council to provide challenge and share learning, with advice on how improvements could be made.

The challenge focussed on five areas:

  • Local priorities and outcomes
  • Organisational and place leadership
  • Governance and culture
  • Financial planning and management
  • Capacity for improvement

The final report outlines where the panel sees strengths in the organisation while also providing constructive thoughts on areas for improvement.

The Action Plan is our response to meeting the challenges identified, and to ensure the council continues on a journey of improvement. A progress update against the six key recommendations was recently presented to Cabinet which showed strong progress and completion of a number of the items.

Cllr Phil Knowles, Leader of Harborough District Council said: “I am pleased that we went through the Local Government Association (LGA) Corporate Peer Challenge (CPC) as the council was overdue and it is best practice to ensure we get external challenge from sector professionals. The verbal end-of-week feedback was extremely complimentary and we have been in close liaison since. The review did come very soon into our new administration and we make no apologies for our initial focus being on delivering a number of initiatives that had stalled. We are really proud of our long list of achievements already including our leisure centre investments, community grants and community awards. In my view, so much has changed for the better at Harborough District Council in the last two years and so much has moved on since November 2024 and our review.

“Firstly, the government announced that Local Government would be re-organised, during the current parliamentary term, into Unitary Authorities which will lead to the end of Harborough District Council in two-three years’ time. Secondly, it is now eight months since the review and as such the six recommendations and most of the actions have all been progressed with many completed. An update was recently presented to Cabinet which showed how far we have come since the review and how much we have already achieved.

“As such we have moved on, whilst we are still a sovereign authority we will be laser focussed on our clear priority of community focus, engaging with residents, delivering community benefit and providing community assets for our residents to enjoy for decades to come.

“So working with all our councillors and all our staff we will be community focussed until the end, but we will look forward to our 12 month CPC review later in the year - that is if the LGA still sees value in carrying them out.”