Scrutiny a function whose time has arrived!
Hazel Blears’ latest White Paper announcements speed up devolution of powers to the public and underline the need to ensure scrutiny is ever more effective as a function of local democracy. And, significantly, this is not only within the local authority itself, but also in the wider local area.
The expansion of local authority scrutiny of external agencies such as Primary Care Trusts signals the positive development of the role. Alongside a growing lobby for all councils – not just those with directly elected mayors – to have a democratic overview of local police, it is easy to see this function becoming fundamental to local democracy in the future.
Hopefully, the increased visibility of senior officers involved in the scrutiny process, through petitions and public hearings, will focus authorities’ minds on targeting additional resources towards scrutiny activities. In my view, this is long overdue. APSE commissioned Cardiff University in 2003 to produce a research report on ‘The Future Role of Elected Members’. Even then the authors found that ‘...much more needed to be done to tap the potential of the overview and scrutiny function and that .... appropriate officer support needed to be given in this area’.
With this in mind, I decided to trawl around and see what models of best practice I could find where effective scrutiny is taking place on the ground. One of the best examples I found was in Northamptonshire CC. The council has not only put in place significant support and resources, but also produced an excellent guide on undertaking the scrutiny function.
Cllr Robin Brown, Northamptonshire’s ‘Scrutiny Champion’, believes that there are five objectives of scrutiny: Policy Development, Policy Review, Performance Management, Holding the Executive to account and The Scrutiny of Outside Bodies.
It is my belief that it is this last objective that will be significantly expanded in coming months and years as the place-shaping agenda evolves. Scrutiny is, of course, the way non-executive members can increasingly use their experience to make a real difference to the wider public sector locally, as well as their councils’ own policies.
If scrutiny is to operate in the way it is envisaged in the White Paper, Communities in Control: Real People, Real Powers, then the time is now right to invest in resources, support and skills development in this area. Councils who don’t may find themselves having to play catch up.
Paul O’Brien is Chief Executive of APSE
