To provide an account of the work of Herefordshire Council’s scrutiny function and its committees during the 2022/23 municipal year.

The chair and Statutory Scrutiny Officer introduced the item and invited discussion on the report from the board.

The board recognised that it had not been possible to complete as effective a review of scrutiny as it would have wished and that purdah had been a significant contributing factor in this.

A discussion took place regarding whether closing down scrutiny during the purdah period had been overly solicitous, given that cabinet members had been able to continue with business as usual. The board felt it might be helpful to establish whether business as usual should include scrutiny, if cabinet members can continue with their work right up to the election.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer explained that his recruitment in early March, without a direct predecessor or knowledge of the improvement journey made through rethinking governance, had, along with the impact of purdah, ensured that this had been a narrative rather analytical report.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer and his line manager had taken the decision that it was more important for the board to account for itself in public than it was to get an effectiveness review right.

It was explained that the final report provided an account of what the Scrutiny Management Board and committee’s had been up to, not just in terms of the themes, but also the work that had been done through rethinking governance and in getting into the habit of accounting for this annually, which had not happened previously.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer asked the board if it felt the report had been commissioned too soon after the formation of the new committees and how it wanted to review its own effectiveness going forward.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer recommended that the board started its work in earnest in relation to how it wanted to measure its effectiveness and how this could be relayed to council on an annual basis, in an achievable and sustainable manner.

The chair suggested there might be a need for a workshop within the work programme to consider quantitative and qualitative views on how such an evaluation could be undertaken. It was noted that the performance of the connected communities scrutiny committee in the previous week (week commencing 17/07/23) delivered some very effective recommendations that were taken into account when it came to Cabinet making its decisions. The chair pointed to that as an effective piece of scrutiny work, which had helped shape how a decision was taken, although it was recognised that there was more to measuring effectiveness than just that.

The chair noted that the creation of new and additional committees had resulted in increased workload not just for councillors, but also in terms of staffing and supporting those committees.

There was a need to ensure that resourcing made available for the scrutiny functions was sufficient to deliver effective scrutiny and to enable the committees to operate how they wanted to.

It was noted that over the last year there had been very few task and finish groups and no  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8