Agenda item

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 may be taken no further, and so putting all their workings in the public domain may not always be helpful. He concluded that effective working between the Cabinet Member and the scrutiny task group was the key to successful scrutiny. 

Other members agreed that there were differences between the two types of working groups. Councillor Hall highlighted that scrutiny task groups were task and finish groups which on completion made recommendations.   Other groups such as the climate change member working group had a long-term role to provide advice to the Cabinet Member who also chaired the group.  Councillor Britter suggested that if the relationship between scrutiny and Cabinet was strong and appropriate linkage between the two was in place then these differences would not be an issue. The priority should be to focus on the relationship and then everything else should fall into place.

Councillor Walklett, as Cabinet Member responsible for scrutiny, was invited to comment. He explained that during his time with the council he had been involved in three scrutiny task groups. As a non Executive member he felt he had been given plenty of opportunities to ask the Cabinet Member questions about their portfolio under the former overview and scrutiny arrangements. He pointed out that if members felt this was no longer the case then Cabinet had not changed but O&S had so the onus was on scrutiny to make the new system work in this respect. Cabinet had worked hard to improve communications to members through arranging member seminars and workshops and he cited the Council size member seminar as a good example. He accepted that Councillor Hibbert had raised a valid argument about reporting back from the various member working groups. However he was keen to highlight that the vast majority of Cabinet Member working groups did include at least one O&S member so suggested that they should have a duty to report back to their main committee.

Councillor Whyborn, Cabinet Member sustainability, sympathised with the views expressed by members and agreed it was important that the O&S committee needed to be well informed in order to carry out their scrutiny role effectively. He emphasised that scrutiny task groups and Cabinet Member working groups were addressing different needs. The function of the Cabinet Member working group on climate change for example was to get together a group of interested members and other experts to assist him as the responsible Cabinet Member in formulating policy and generating ideas. He stated his intention to carry on chairing this group. Clearly if O&S decided they wanted to scrutinise an issue in more depth then it would not be appropriate for the Cabinet Member to chair the resulting scrutiny task group. However he felt they should be invited to attend scrutiny task groups in order to get their buy in and understanding. In his view, the way forward was to ensure that one or two members of the O&S committee were on each working group and they could then present reports to the main committee. The only alternative was to invite all the Cabinet Members to meetings of O&S to be questioned in detail on a wide range of issues.

The chair had some concerns about a scrutiny member of the Cabinet Member working group reporting back to this committee and felt it should be the Cabinet Member themselves who would have a fuller understanding of all the issues.

The chair referred members to the draft form for setting up a new member working group in appendix 3 of the report. The idea was that this form would be completed and would then come to O&S for discussion. The O&S committee would be acting as a commissioning group for all working groups.

Councillor Hay suggested that one of the functions of this committee should be to manage and co-ordinate the non-executive councillors and the work they do on the council. Therefore it was appropriate for a proposal for a new working group to come to scrutiny that could then source members for the group. If a working group was set up by Council and members appointed by Council then the role of this committee would be to ensure that the working group was operating effectively.

The chair asked for a show of hands on members support for the new form and subsequently receiving updates on the work of all the member working groups.  Members gave this their support and the Democratic Services manager agreed to take this forward.