Agenda item

An opportunity for members to give feedback on current scrutiny arrangements 12 months on from their implementation in May 2012.

The Democratic Services Manager opened this topic up for discussion stating that Democratic Services wanted feedback on how the new scrutiny arrangements were  working since their introduction in May 2012.

A member stated that he had seen a change in the scrutiny arrangements and said that the call in process should also be looked into.

Another member discussed how Scrutiny task groups relate to Cabinet working groups and asked for the relationship between them to be defined. The member  said that she did not think this relationship was working well. She considered that scrutiny should be the ‘power house’ and be holding Cabinet to account. In  reality, Cabinet have delayed making decisions on the recommendations of some task groups.  She called for a proper protocol to be drawn up regarding the involvement of Cabinet Members in reviews and suggested that they should be invited to the final meetings of the task group so they could  express any concerns they may have on the report and recommendations.

Another member said that the council is being scrutinised, but the scrutiny groups aren’t themselves being measured. They aren’t necessarily being held to account. The member  asked, ‘have we made a difference?’ and what were the success measures for overview and scrutiny? . The chair suggested the Annual Report to Council will set out the achievements of overview and scrutiny and there should be a regular progress report.  It was also important to track the implementation of any scrutiny recommendations agreed by Cabinet.

A member suggested that it would be useful if Cabinet working groups knew what Scrutiny had been doing and visa-versa. The chair asked the members whether they thought it would be useful to hear from the Cabinet working groups through the provision of a written report. The Democratic Services Manager agreed to progress this. The chair suggested that the relevant Cabinet Member could then be invited to attend this committee to answer questions on their working group.

There was a suggestion from a member that the Cabinet Member working groups tended to be involved in policy development leaving scrutiny to the task groups. The chair reminded members that ‘overview’ was part of overview and scrutiny’s remit. The Cabinet Member could also commission policy development work from Overview and Scrutiny and they would be free to accept the recommendations or not. If the Cabinet Members working groups were to report back to this committee, that might start to redress this balance.
 

It was suggested that work should not be duplicated but it was acknowleged that here was some confusion. As an example, a member had suggested the garden bag scheme should be looked into as a scrutiny topic, but was advised that a Cabinet working group were also looking into this.

The chair stated that O&S should be about visibility, accountability and transparency. However, he stated that the Cabinet working groups worked behind closed doors. With regard to the Events task group, policy had been developed but was then stalled when it got to Cabinet. The Cabinet member had then set up a further working group to recreate the recommendations from the task group.  This approach had duplicated work and the process was dysfunctional..

The chair asked the committee if they were happy with the questionnaire provided by Democratic Services. He  wanted to encourage a 100% return on the questionnaire and said that some members may prefer to be contacted over the telephone to fill it in. The intention was the results would help with understanding why some members were still not engaging in the scrutiny process. 

One member suggested that it would be useful to invite the Leader to a session with the chair and vice chair of this committee in order to understand their views on O&S.

The Democratic Services Manager confirmed that a report on the results of the review would be brought back to this committee.