What the Nolan Principles Can and Cannot Do

Selflessness. Integrity. Objectivity. Accountability. Openness. Honesty. Leadership. Every holder of public office in the United Kingdom is expected to live by them. They appear in codes of conduct, induction packs and training from Whitehall to the smallest parish council, and many BID boards adopt them too.

They are a good description of public service at its best. On their own, though, they were never meant to be a system for checking it.

The principles describe character

The seven principles are a list of virtues. They describe what a person of good character looks like in public life: selfless, honest, accountable.

Character matters a great deal. But it is hard to check from the outside. There is no register of selflessness, and no filing that records whether a judgement was objective.

Structure can be checked. Who holds which roles. Which companies share which directors. Where levy income is spent. Who was in the room when a decision was made, and what they declared. These are things the public record shows.

The Nolan Principles set an expectation of character. Structures, registers and procedures are what let the public see whether that expectation is being met.

Who applies them

The accountability principle says that holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions, and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.

The principle itself does not say who carries out that scrutiny, what form it takes, or what follows if it does not happen. Those answers sit elsewhere: in codes of conduct, standards committees, audit, and the law.

That is by design. The principles were written as a clear, plain statement of what public life should look like, not as a legal framework. They work best when the bodies that adopt them also have the procedures that give them effect.

When the principles are cited

Organisations often refer to the principles when they describe their own standards: the board is committed to openness and accountability, decisions are taken in line with the Seven Principles of Public Life.

Statements like these are sincere in most cases. A reader who wants to understand how a body works will still want to see the practical side: a published register of interests, minutes that record declarations, and a clear policy for what happens when an interest meets a decision.

Accountability in BIDs

Of the seven, accountability matters most for local bodies such as BIDs, and it is the hardest to apply to them.

A BID is not a public body. It is a private company limited by guarantee. Its directors are not elected in the usual sense, and it is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act. Yet it spends a compulsory levy on public streets.

The accountability principle reaches BID boards in spirit because of that levy. The practical tools that make it real for councils, such as published registers, open meetings and information rights, do not all apply. Good BIDs adopt them voluntarily.

Openness in practice

The openness principle says that holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner, and should not withhold information from the public without clear and lawful reasons.

In local government, much information is published as a matter of course. Much else is available only on request, under the Freedom of Information Act. That route works, but it depends on people knowing what to ask for. Openness is strongest when publication is the starting point and a request is the exception.

Leadership

The leadership principle asks holders of public office to show the principles in their own behaviour, to promote and support them, and to be willing to challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.

It is the most demanding of the seven, because it asks people to raise concerns in rooms where everyone knows each other. Clear procedures help here too. It is much easier to ask a colleague to step out of a decision when the policy already says they should.

What the principles cannot do on their own

The principles cannot, by themselves, separate roles that overlap, require competition in procurement, or make a declaration happen. Those things need rules and structures.

That is not a criticism of Lord Nolan or of the committee. The principles were a response to a particular moment, and they did what they set out to do: they named the standard clearly and gave everyone a shared language for it.

Principles and structure together

Good governance puts the two together. Roles that do not overlap by design. Procurement that is open by default. Registers that are published and kept up to date. Questions that have a named person to answer them, in a known format, within a known time.

Most people in local governance want to do the right thing. The structures around them decide how easy that is, and how visible it is to everyone else. The Nolan Principles describe what we hope for from the people in the room. It is worth asking, too, whether the room is set up to make that possible.

This essay is a general discussion of the Nolan Principles as a framework. It does not concern any particular person or organisation.