The seven Nolan principles of public life, explained

The Committee on Standards in Public Life was established in October 1994 to advise the Prime Minister on ethical standards across public life in the UK. Its first chair, Lord Nolan, gave his name to the committee's most enduring output: seven principles of public life, set out in the committee's first report in 1995 and known ever since as the Nolan principles. Three decades on, they remain the benchmark for conduct in British public life, written into codes of conduct across government, health, policing and education.

Who the principles apply to

The principles apply to anyone who works as a public office-holder: ministers and civil servants, local councillors and council officers, people working in the NHS, the police, the courts, and non-departmental public bodies. They also extend to people in the private and voluntary sectors who deliver public services. In education, school governors and academy trustees are expected to have regard to them.

The simplest formulation is this: any leader in receipt of public funds should act with selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. But you do not need to hold public office for the principles to be useful. They are good basic standards for anyone in a leadership or management role, in any sector.

The seven principles

1. Selflessness

Leaders should act solely in terms of the public interest: to serve others, never to gain financial or other benefits for themselves, their family or their friends. In an organisational setting, selflessness means decisions are taken for the good of the organisation and the people it serves, and never bent towards personal advantage.

2. Integrity

Leaders should avoid placing themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their duties. Integrity is about independence: if accepting a favour, a gift or a relationship would give someone leverage over your decisions, decline it.

3. Objectivity

Leaders should be just in carrying out the business of their role, including awarding contracts, making appointments and recommending individuals for rewards or benefits. Choices must be made on merit alone. Objectivity is the principle most often tested in day-to-day management, because it governs the decisions that affect other people's careers and livelihoods.

4. Accountability

Leaders are accountable for their decisions and actions and should submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their role. Accountability means owning outcomes, including the uncomfortable ones, and treating scrutiny as legitimate rather than as an affront.

5. Openness

Leaders should be as open as possible about the decisions and actions they take, backed by a clear rationale. Information should be restricted only when there are clear and lawful reasons for doing so. In practice, openness means people affected by a decision can find out what was decided and why.

6. Honesty

Leaders should declare any private interests relating to their duties and take steps to resolve any conflicts of interest that arise. Honesty here is specific: it is about being truthful and about surfacing the situations where your private interests and your responsibilities could pull in different directions.

7. Leadership

Finally, leaders should promote and support these principles by leadership and example. This is the principle that binds the other six together: standards survive in organisations because people at the top visibly live them and are willing to challenge poor behaviour when they see it.

Why they endure

The principles have lasted because they describe habits, and habits can be practised. They are also deliberately demanding: acting on merit alone, submitting to scrutiny, declaring interests, and challenging poor conduct all carry a personal cost precisely when they matter most.

It is worth remembering their limit, though. The principles are external standards, and an individual's internal drivers are a more powerful motivating force than any code. Cultivating your own sense of moral purpose is integral to good leadership; the Nolan principles work best as a floor, with personal conviction built on top of them.

Using the principles as a leader

A practical exercise: take a significant decision you made this month, a hire, a contract, a difficult call about a person, and test it against the seven principles. Was it made on merit alone? Could you explain the rationale openly to the people it affected? Were any private interests in play, and were they declared? Where a decision fails one of the tests, that is the conversation worth having next.

The seven principles of public life were defined by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Go deeper

This guide is adapted from material in Trigfell's Ethical Leadership course, built with the leadership consultants at Promoting Excellence. Browse the course catalogue to see the leadership courses currently open, including Authentic Leadership, which examines what it takes to lead in line with your values when it would be easier not to.