Agenda item

Report attached.

Members considered a report that outlined the terms of reference of the Overview & Scrutiny Board.

The report outlined that the establishment of an Overview and Scrutiny Board would allow the co-ordination of work amongst the six Sub-Committees and that all Sub-Committee Chairmen would be members of the Board. The Board would need to consider how best work could be coordinated to avoid duplication of effort and how it could ensure that the effectiveness of scrutiny was monitored. Additionally, the Board would have a number of specific powers and responsibilities.

It would be the responsibility of the Board to deal with all requisitions or call-ins received of Executive Decisions. Clearly, it would seem appropriate for the relevant Sub-Committee Chairman to have close involvement in scrutiny of the requisitioned issue but Members should note the change to previous practice whereby all requisitions would now be considered at Board level. It may also on occasion be necessary to call a meeting of the Board at short notice in order to allow for timely consideration of a called-in decision.

Formal scrutiny of the Council’s overall budgets would now be the responsibility of the Overview and Scrutiny Board with the previous twice-yearly (if required) joint budget meetings of the overview and scrutiny committees now becoming meetings of the Overview and Scrutiny Board. The Overview and Scrutiny Board would also receive for scrutiny each set of performance reports that had been considered by Cabinet.

The functions of the former Value Overview and Scrutiny Committee would be taken over by the Overview and Scrutiny Board. The Board would therefore have the full scrutiny functions, including the establishment of any topic groups, within the following areas:

During discussions Members agreed that it would be useful in future if meetings of the Board could be synced in line with meeting of Cabinet to ensure that the latest performance indicator data was available for consideration.

Members also requested a list of the Council’s policies and strategies and asked that the list be broken down into overview & scrutiny areas of responsibility. Members were advised that there was a schedule of policies and strategies available that was being used to develop a policies and strategies framework.

Members agreed that all future topic group reports should go straight to Cabinet rather than through the Board to ensure there was no delay in Cabinet considering the findings.

Members were reminded that topic group recommendations needed to be specific and achievable to allow them to be considered for implementation following Cabinet consideration.

Following a previous strategic review of scrutiny it had been suggested that one topic group be set up at a time to allow for efficient officer support.

During the discussion Members agreed that as topic groups were not decision making bodies some topic groups could be set up and run without officer support and that the group’s findings could be fed back to officers at the end of the scrutiny period.

Members agreed to continue with the former Value OSC’s previously agreed topic groups of debt recovery and sickness absence management.

It was AGREED to adopt the terms of reference of the Overview and Scrutiny Board.