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 spotlight reviews. Assurances would be needed that adequate funding was available to resource for officers and to co-opt technical experts from outside when required.

The board discussed the process being developed regarding the executive response to scrutiny recommendations and asked if this could come before the scrutiny management board before it was finalised and made concrete.

The chair stressed to the assembled committee chairs the importance of scrutinising external partners and organisations, and bringing them into the scrutiny process. This was a powerful tool in their possession and should be exercised when putting together work programmes.

The board made a number of general points in relation to the report:

Regarding the terms of reference for the committees, as laid out in paragraph 4, it was noted that there were potential areas of overlap between the Connected Communities and Environment and Sustainability Scrutiny Committees, particularly in relation to the areas of planning and transport. These had been resolved between the relevant committees and no alteration to work programmes had been required, but it was felt there was a certain lack of clarity within the committee remits and that maintaining a watching brief might be advisable.

The board raised concerns regarding the 12 objectives contained in paragraph 13 of the report and felt that it might be wise to pare these down somewhat to avoid overlap/repetition and to concentrate focus. It was acknowledged that the objectives had only been in place for a year or so, so there was still time to see how/if they worked.

Considering paragraph 27, the board felt that Connected Communities wasn’t specifically responsible for community related issues and that on a general level the name of the committee was unhelpfully vague. It was noted that issues concerning community were often directly related to health, care and wellbeing, and children and young people rather than just the economic development and infrastructure elements looked at by Connected Communities.

The board found it helpful to have the appendices, reports and the summary provided, but felt there were a lot of bullet points and stressed the need for continuity when using numbers and lettering as part of reports.

It was noted that the report for the Scrutiny Management Board employed a different format and was more of an action plan than a narrative report. It was suggested that going forward this report could be clearer in detailing what each committee was setting out to do and that it could then be used to track progress over the year.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer felt that the Scrutiny Management Board had done too much reviewing of its own effectiveness during the previous administration and that it had become hard to unpick sets of objectives from sets of recommendations and sets of outputs. Aligning all of this information had been problematic.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer recommended that when committees went back to their effectiveness reviews, it would be beneficial to look at what was actually done over the previous year, what was complete, what could be safely dropped and what needed to be added. A more streamlined approach going forward would represent a far better use of time.

The chair suggested a workshop would allow for discussion on how/if the 12 objectives could be reduced to a more manageable number.

The board identified a need for clear outward facing communications to inform and update the public on how the council and scrutiny committees work and what activity they have and will be involved in.

The board felt that following the September meeting it would be helpful to draw up a communications plan and establish service level commitment in relation to what support communications could provide to scrutiny. Information was regularly released focusing on cabinet and council decisions, and scrutiny activity should be treated in a similar manner.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer explained that regular meetings had been set up with the managers responsible for the governance aspects of the council. Meetings would be held at the end of each committee cycle to discuss committee work programmes with officers and the communications team, with a view to identifying areas of potential interest in terms of communications. Work was also ongoing in relation to the council’s website and this would place increased focus on scrutiny activity.

The board praised the amount of training that had been provided over the last year and stressed the continued need for training to aid in effective questioning and understanding of scrutiny functions.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer explained that training relating to question asking skills had been omitted from induction training due to time restrictions, but that this could be offered as a standalone topic for a training session for new and existing members. This and other training would take place over the coming year and committee work programmes would help shape training needs.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer drew the board’s attention to a number of useful background documents available on the Teams space including:

-          The Good Scrutiny Guide

-          A Workbook for Councillors

-          Local Government Association Workbook on Scrutinising Finance (located in the financial strategy folder)

The chair encouraged committee chairs to hold pre-meetings where they could agree the lines of questioning and assist members to take the lead on a line of questioning. Some of the questioning skills expertise could be drip fed to members through those meetings, they would also provide an integrated view of everybody’s opinions about certain lines of questioning.

A discussion took place regarding the use of applications such as WhatsApp to aid communications and allow for swift sharing of information between committee members.

The chair acknowledged the benefits of such apps for political groups, but felt that a discreet and secure council system of communication such as Teams was better suited to scrutiny.

The Statutory Scrutiny Officer stated that training on Teams could be provided as required.

The board discussed outsourcing work and the need to scrutinise the council’s companies and suppliers. The board noted that this was something the previous committee had intended to do and that it should be added to the work programme, as ‘Oversight of performance of Council’s companies, e.g. Hoople’ was listed within the remit of the Scrutiny Management Board.

It was also noted that Hoople and any other shareholding would be picked up by the newly established shareholder committee, although this would focus more on the council’s relationship with these shareholders, rather than scrutinising them.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY:

That: a) Scrutiny’s annual report be noted.