Agenda item

The report seeks the views of Overview & Scrutiny about the proposals to review the Council’s Policy & Performance functions.

The Committee received the report about the proposed model for streamlining the Council’s Policy and Performance functions which was taking place as part of a programme of reviews to reduce support based resources and provide more efficient services.

The Committee expressed concerns that the review had been handled poorly and there was poor communication.  The Scrutiny Function had been added to the review at a very late stage and that under the new proposed model there would be a pool of staff across the Policy and Performance service rather than dedicated Scrutiny Officers.  Members felt this would not ensure impartiality or independent and transparent scrutiny and would weaken the overall effectiveness of scrutiny.  

The Assistant Chief Executive highlighted that whilst the new model did not have dedicated scrutiny support, it also did not include dedicated policy, equality or partnership teams.  He explained that there would still be support to Scrutiny shared between a number of the policy officer posts detailed in the proposed staffing arrangements in Annexe 2 of the report (page 16 of the agenda pack).  The achieved percentage reduction in spend had `changed from 50% to 43% following the withdrawal of some posts from the review.  These would now be considered as part of other staffing reviews.

The Committee questioned whether there would be a full time person who would organise Scrutiny and be a point of contact for enquiries.  It was reported that there could be a dedicated point of contact for scrutiny within the proposed management structure.

In response to questions and comments from the Committee it was noted:

• Health and Police partners had been consulted on the overall proposals.
• Contributions to the cost of support to the HSP was largely funded by Area Based Grants.
• The Assistant Chief Executive agreed to the suggestion that there should be a 6 monthly review of the function.
• Scrutiny work would be scheduled and planned based on the Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s work programme.
• The overall scope of the Overview & Scrutiny Committee would not change under the terms of this staffing review.
• It was recognised that it could be difficult for an officer who might have written a policy to be impartial during a scrutiny review relating to that policy but experience of officers could also be an advantage to this and work would be allocated to avoid such conflict.
• To achieve the 36% reduction in resources there will be an impact on services across the board; however, the aspiration was that a full and comprehensive scrutiny work programme would still be covered.
• The proposed model could still resource a level of performance monitoring despite the Government’s announcement that a number of Local Area Agreement (LAA) targets will be revoked.  There will be further work done to ensure that the Council was not working on performance indicators which were no longer compulsory.

The general consensus of the Committee was that the proposals would mean a reduction in support to the scrutiny function and, whilst policy officers could contribute to the research function of scrutiny, dedicated, independent scrutiny officers were required to maintain confidence in the scrutiny function. 

RESOLVED

i.          That the Committee’s comments be presented to the General Purposes Committee on 28^th October 2010.

ii.         That the Committee recommends that an independent and dedicated scrutiny support function be maintained.

iii.        That a 6 month review of the new Policy and Performance function will take place.