The 7 principles of public life (also known as the Nolan Principles

The 7 Principles of Public Life:

The 7 principles of public life apply to anyone who works as a public office-holder. This includes people who are elected or appointed to public office, nationally and locally, and all people appointed to work in:

  • the civil service
  • local government
  • the police
  • the courts and probation services
  • non-departmental public bodies
  • health, education, social and care services

The principles also apply to all those in other sectors that deliver public services and those principles we implemented as a rule of law to prevent the public from abuse from public authorities and their officers. It is the lack of enforcement and the wilful failings of the only regulator, or should we say, the absence of any independent regulator to enforce the standards that paves the way for widespread office holder misfeasance and unaccountable public authorities. Those failings in turn creates the path for widespread lack of accountability, honesty, integrity and compromisation of standards within those public authorities and the sectors they purport to regulate.

The 7 principles of public life, listed below, are well devised and if implemented, would curb much of the gross malfeasance that we have established to run rife in these public authorities that purport to act in the public interest and in fact do the opposite: