To receive apologies for absence.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Graham Andrews, with apologies also from Councillors Lester, Swinglehurst and Wilding who were in attendance virtually online. 

To receive details of members nominated to attend the meeting in place of a member of the board.

None.

To receive declarations of interests in respect of Schedule 1, Schedule 2 or Other Interests from members of the board in respect of items on the agenda.

None received.

To receive any written questions from members of the public.

None received.

To receive any written questions from members of the council.

None received.

To consider and discuss the role of the Scrutiny Management Board and to make any recommendations on its future operation

The Chairperson explained that the purpose of this item was to consider the draft Statement of Intent of the Scrutiny Management Board, at Appendix A to the officer report circulated. Intention of the document was to set out the overall objectives for what the Scrutiny Management Board wished to achieve.  It was anticipated that the other scrutiny committees would also set out their own strategic objectives in conjunction with this.  This would help to provide some overall criteria to assess the performance of the scrutiny committees at the end of the year as part of an annual effectiveness review of the scrutiny function.

The Chairperson then invited the Interim Statutory Scrutiny Officer to present the report.  He explained that the report set out the role and approach of the Scrutiny Management Board for the year ahead, how the committee’s intended to operate and coordinate the scrutiny activities of the Council through the Board, including the Annual Scrutiny Work Programme 2022-2023, dealing with any cross cutting issues, coordinating the scrutiny process and relationships with the Executive and other key stakeholders, the further development and improvement of the Scrutiny function and scrutiny of corporate cross cutting issues, such as the Council Budget, corporate performance, strategic management and partnerships.

Members of the Board were invited to discuss and to comment on the draft Statement of Intent and to offer their considerations, amendments or additional actions for the interim Statutory Scrutiny Officer to update the statement.

It was proposed that Key Role 1, Objective c; “to consider scrutiny member training and development requirement” should be amended to replace the word “consider” with “oversee” so that it is more definitive.

The extent to which the Scrutiny Management Board would direct the work programme of the other scrutiny committees was raised and Key Role 2, Objective b) “where a matter falls within the remit of one or more committees, decide which committee will consider it…”.  The Chairperson said that it was her expectation that each scrutiny committee would develop its own work plan and that these would then be brought together into a combined Work Programme, as set out at Role 2 Objective a) “agree the Annual Scrutiny Work Programme, that being the combined work programmes of the scrutiny committees”.  It was commented that this role was to provide effective oversight of the scrutiny committee’s work. 

It was proposed that the title of the Statement of Intent should be changed to “Memorandum of Understanding”. The Senior Solicitor advised that the terminology “Memorandum of Understanding” may carry some unintended legal connotations, which may imply an arrangement with third party organisations, which was not the case here. It was proposed that the title be changed to “Committee Objectives”.

It was queried if there may be some way of normalising virtual attendance at scrutiny committees to recognise attendance and voting of members attending virtually.  The Senior Solicitor advised that the legislation did not allow for members to attend meetings and vote and that there was therefore no scope for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.