Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Reconfiguring Scrutiny - A Step in The Right Direction

A paper is coming to Community Leadership Working Party next week that reviews the Scrutiny function. This has been on the cards for a while, but gained more importance after the recent debates on the GLL contract. Many of the issues covered are ones I have raised in this Blog:

My comments on it are:

1. The separation of audit is long overdue. Councillor Zaidi will be kept busy!

2. The new scrutiny committees make a lot of sense with external scrutiny developing further with Policing likely to come under Sustainable Communities. In view of the need to be fair, I will be suggesting at the Police Consultative Committee that they apply for its Chair to be made a "special advisor" to the new Committee to build better Police Community engagement links. I suspect this suggestion will be accepted.

3. I am a little concerned over the proposal for SCAGs. I aggree they should be reviewed to see if their work can be covered by the new Committees, however I am concerned if any are downgraded to informal working parties as this takes us back to the unclear lines of accountability that led to the wheelie bin debacle. I recommend Councillors reread the excellent 150 or so page report on this subject writtne, by previous Chief Executive, Joanna Simons, her most important contribution to this Council. Hopefully following further discussion, this point could be looked at again?

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