Issue - meetings

A discussion paper

The chair referred members to the summary of other member working groups which had been circulated with the agenda following a request at the last meeting. The report highlighted the various types of member working groups operating within the Council and the differences between them.

The chair initiated the discussion with an example of an issue regarding the green bag scheme that she had wanted to be looked at by a scrutiny task group. However she had been advised that this was an issue being looked at by the Cabinet Member waste working group. In her opinion it was sometimes arbitrary which group looked at an issue. She had also had experience of chairing a Cabinet Member working group looking at the Housing review. In the absence of Councillor Smith, she highlighted his concern that scrutiny was not being given the opportunity to get involved in overview as this was generally being carried out by Cabinet Member working groups.

Councillor Hibbert felt that all of the working groups should be reporting back through this committee. This would enable all members to be better informed and would demonstrate publicly the extent of the work being done by the council outside of the formal committees. She was concerned that many members were not engaging in scrutiny. She suggested that they may be encouraged to attend meetings of this committee if they felt it was going to be a single source of information. Councillor Driver supported the view that working groups should report back to this committee. 

Councillor Bickerton asked for clarity on why meetings of task groups and Cabinet Member working groups did not always go in the public domain. Councillor Stewart suggested there needed to be more clarity on when a Cabinet Member should be invited to attend a scrutiny task group.

Councillor Hay agreed there needed to be a reporting mechanism back to this committee as it was important that all members had an understanding of what work was being done across the council. However he was keen to emphasise the real differences between a scrutiny task group and a Cabinet Member working group. The former was free to explore any issues without direction from the Cabinet Member and come up with a report of recommendations for consideration by the Cabinet. He felt it was important that the Cabinet Member was present at the initial meeting of the scrutiny task group, not to direct the group but to update the task group on any other relevant work being done and give ideas. It was also important that the Cabinet Member was involved in the final meeting of the task group to give an opportunity to comment on the recommendations of the task group before they were received by Cabinet. By contrast the Cabinet Member working group was set up at the request of the Cabinet Member as an advisory group to the Cabinet Member. Councillor Hay stressed the importance of these groups being free to explore ideas, some of which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9