Agenda item

Councillor Payne, Chair of the scrutiny task group

Objective: consider and agree the actions and timescales being proposed by the task group following their consideration of the Campbell Tickell recommendations

The Chairman reminded members that the objective for this committee was to consider the proposed actions and timescales being proposed by the task group.    

Councillor Payne, as Chair of the task group, was pleased to be able to present the report, which set out the proposed actions and timescales in response to the Campbell Tickell recommendations and which he felt clearly demonstrated the rationale for each of the proposed actions.  He explained that for health reasons he had been prevented from attending all but one of the meetings, and thanked the other members of the group, Councillors Parsons, McCloskey and Barrell for their hard work.  He also wished to put on record his thanks to the Democracy Officer and Executive Director People & Change for the considerable organisational skill, knowledge and support that they had provided the group.  He felt that the report made clear that the methodology used by the group was sound and had allowed them to scrutinise the recommendations and develop well thought out responses for each, as detailed in the report.  Campbell Tickell had made 19 recommendations and whilst he did not intend to go through them all, he felt some were particularly important.  Recommendation 1 and defining the role of the committee, was the key recommendation and he felt that the draft definition was sound, workable and covered a huge proportion of the work undertaken by the committee. 

He was of the opinion that much progress had been made over the last two years in terms of the briefs and advice being provided to report writers and presenters (Recommendation 10) and that this was critical in ensuring the continued success of the committee.

Another critical recommendation, in his view, was that relating to the continued development for members and the de-brief that would be scheduled at the end of each agenda would provide an effective means of allowing the committee to scrutinise its own performance and become more effective.    

Councillor Payne explained that the committee were being asked to approve the proposed actions and timescales in response to the 19 Campbell Tickell recommendations.  At this stage he reminded members that of these 19 recommendations, twelve had already actioned, which he felt clearly demonstrated the commitment of officers and the organisation as a whole, to modernise and enhance the relevance of scrutiny.  One recommendation was being rejected (as it called for the Chair to read all reports ahead of publication and was simply impractical) and the remaining six were due to be completed by the end of June 2021.

The Executive Director People & Change highlighted member comments on the quality of the report and presentation for the previous item and acknowledged that tightening-up of the administration of the committee had driven improvement, a journey which he hoped would continue.

Councillor Barrell, commented that she had thoroughly enjoyed her time on the group and echoed the sentiments of Councillor Payne in terms of the level support provided by Officers.  She also highlighted that having attended a recent scrutiny training session run by Gloucestershire County Council she had been pleased to see that this committee was doing much of what was being suggested as part of that training, and encouraged that, in fact, we were doing more in some cases. 

Upon a vote it was unanimously

RESOLVED that the proposed responses to the Campbell Tickell recommendations (see Appendix 1 of the task group report), be accepted.