Public Appointments > Research and Reports > Annual Reports > Annual Report 2023/24
Public Appointments Annual Report 2023/24
05 November 2024
The Ethical Standards Commissioner’s standalone Public Appointments Annual Report provides an overview of our work during the 2023/24 financial year, and highlights:
- How we performed against our business plan and how the Scottish Government performed against the targets set in Diversity Delivers, the Commissioner’s public appointments strategy since 2008;
- How we monitored and provided guidance on the public appointments process in Scotland; and,
- How the regulated public appointments landscape has continued to change throughout 2023-24.
In 2023/24, we...
Regulated 100 | Regulated 770 | Oversaw 86 | Responded to 673 |
This is also the first full year within which the 2022 Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments became operational. Since its implementation, we have observed some emerging trends:
- Panel chairs most frequently report the following as reasons for success on appointment rounds:
- Ability to apply learning from previous rounds (42% of rounds in 2023)
- Having an effective publicity plan (38%)
- Having a good understanding of the communities targeted for publicity (27%).
- There is an increasing demand for appointees with ‘lived experience’ on the boards of Scotland’s public bodies
- There appears to be a growing challenge to successfully appointing chairs in 2023/24, with a number of rounds failing to identify a suitable candidate
Reflecting on the progress made in the year, Ian Bruce, the Ethical Standards Commissioner, said the following about our programme of work for the year ahead:
In the coming year we intend to continue to embed the revised Code through the provision of guidance. By gathering and analysing the end of round reports we intend to aid learning between and across appointment rounds. We will also be tendering to contract with an individual or organisation to work on the revised diversity strategy, which will provide recommendations on how all regulated boards in Scotland can become still more reflective of the communities that they serve.
