Agenda item

The Committee received a report which sought comments on how best to develop the scrutiny work programme and sought member’s input into how targeted, inclusive and timely work could be undertaken around issues of local importance. The report was introduced by Philip Slawther, Scrutiny Officer as set out at pages 107-119 of agenda pack. Members were also asked to propose items for upcoming meetings in July and September. The following arose as part of the discussion:

a.    The Committee commented that they were broadly supportive of coming up with a different approach for a scrutiny café event. It was agreed that the session should be quite informal and conversational in nature, rather than a series a deputations or pitches.

b.    The Chair of the Adults panel suggested that she would like to be able to hear from frontline staff and to hear their perspective. It was suggested that this could perhaps be done through the unions.

c.    It was suggested that the Comms around the event should be framed in terms of ‘how you can help us improve council services’. It was noted that the idea of scrutiny and what it does might not mean a lot to most residents.

d.    It was proposed that Scrutiny needed to hear from a wide array of people and that it was be good to speak to people who perhaps didn’t engage with the Council very often. Local colleges were suggested as one cohort of people that members would like to engage with.

e.    Members suggested that a key age demographic would be 18-35.

f.     It was suggested that the café event should seek to hear from people who use council services, particularly private renters, council tenants, leaseholders and also potentially landlords. The Chair commented that organisations such as Acorn or LRU perhaps represented a fairly narrow group of very politically engaged tenants/renters.

g.    It was suggested that scrutiny would also like to hear from councillor colleagues, particularly in terms of persistent or unusual issues that have come up as part of casework and whether some of these people could be invited to the event.  

h.    In response to comments about whether Members were happy with having one event covering each of the panels, the Chair commented that he was in favour of one event – particularly as four different events might make it even harder for people to understand what was happening and which session they should attend.

i.      Members had differing opinions on whether it should be one joint session or whether there should be different stalls for each panel and attendees could focus on a particular stall.  The idea of timeslots was welcomed, in terms of trying to keep a degree of structure. Another possible suggestion was noted as having one joint session but allocating say an hour for each panel area.

j.      The Chair of the Housing Panel suggested that she would prefer to see small groups of people speaking to a particular panel chair and that this could be managed like a councillor’s ward surgery where the flow of the meeting was determined by who showed up. It was also noted that attendees could be encouraged to mingle around different stalls if they were interested.

k.    The Committee noted that for the July meeting there was also a report scheduled around and update on agency staffing. (Philip).

l.      The Committee commented that they would like to receive an update on the insourcing of leisure services in the borough, given that this was due to happen in October. After discussion, it was felt that the update would be most useful if it came after the insourcing had happened so that there was enough time for the service to be up and running and in order to receive a meaningful update on how the new service was functioning. The Scrutiny officers agreed to speak to officers for timescales. The December and March meetings were floated as possible dates. (Action: Philip).

RESOLVED

     I.        That, subject to approval by the Committee its meeting on 24^th June,  the Committee agreed the overall approach outlined at Section 5 of the report, including developing a two-year work programme for Overview and Scrutiny for 2024-26, for approval at its meeting on 14 October 2024; and

    II.        That the Committee gave comments on how they would like to proceed with a consultative ‘Scrutiny Café’ event to engage with the local community about the work programme, as well as conducting on online scrutiny survey.

  III.        That, pending commencement of the finalised work programme, the Committee agree the provisional items for its meetings on 23 July and 14 October, subject to approval by the Committee its meeting on 24^th June.