A council that operates with an Executive Cabinet, such as EDDC, must have an Overview and Scrutiny function. Until this election, this was one committee at EDDC. Now, in its wisdom, the committee has been split in two: an Overview Committee and a Scrutiny Committee.
The Scrutiny Committee is chaired (at least for now) by Independent Councillor Roger Giles. We say “at least for now” because Councillor Giles (who had the highest vote of any candidate in the last election) is a rigorous scrutineer of EDDC, which has not made him popular with ruling Tories. How long they can stand his careful scrutiny and extremely good chairmanship at this committee remains to be seen.
However, EDDC, in its wisdom, and no doubt to help Councillor Giles, EDDC officers have given the Committee a very firm idea of what it expects of it. This is found in pages 3-5 of the agenda (see link at the end of this post) for the current committee which met a few days ago.
The suggestions in red are ours!
“Questioning is key. As a Scrutiny Committee member – you want to be prepared, so below are some helpful prompts to help you form your questions. Your questioning technique is crucial in order to encourage open answers
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avoid interrogation and treat those you are questioning with respect, but don’t be afraid to ask supplementary questions of you feel you haven’t been given a clear answer.” So far so good.
• IS IT REQUIRED? (do we have this, does it make sense to tackle it, do we really need it). Who decides whether we have to do it, tackle it or need it? If it is majority party members or officers, is it truly scrutiny?
• IS IT SYSTEMS THINKING? (is it evidence based and designed around the customer demands) Oh dear, systems thinking – in our view a very expensive pseudo-gobbledegook theory which has cost EDDC thousands of pounds in consultant time to implement and seems to us can be distilled into two questions: Does it improve things? Is it cheaper?
• IS THE INTENTION CLEAR? (what are we actually trying to achieve) Is whose intention clear? If the intention is not clear, will it stop scrutiny? Surely if the intention is NOT clear it demands scrutiny!
• ANY REAL OUTCOMES? (are we actually, and measurably, achieving things for our customers). Ah, customers – remember customers are often developers. And, again, how can one be sure what the outcomes might be unless they are scrutinised. And are the outcomes in the best interests of the electorate, if not, whose interests are being served and why?
• WHAT IS THE COST? (both time and money) How can this be measured when officer time is never, ever costed on any project?
• DOES IT COMPLY? (have we checked that it meets our obligations, the law, any formal guidance, and any Council policy or resolutions). Ah, that catch-all “formal guidance” – guidance is simply guidance and means that you can ignore it. There is no such thing as “formal guidance” unless they mean the law which is definitely NOT guidance! What happens if a council resolution is unfair or unethical?
• OTHERS DO WHAT? (how do other organisations tackle this, best practice) Yes, very useful, as long as you do not cherry-pick your “best practice” to suit your own ends.
• EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT? (how do we know we’re doing things well, in a timely fashion, and at “best value”) Again, you cannot know best value if you do not cost officer time. And how do you measure “best value” for social costs? Is effective disadvantaging anyone? Is efficient also ethical? Is it long-term pain for short-term gain?
• WHAT IS THE RISK? (any areas of risk for the Council) Fine, as long as reputational risk is excluded. Scrutiny should be fearless and impartial.
• ANYONE LOSE OUT? (are there sections of the community who might be disadvantaged by this approach, or be less able to take advantage, than others) How do you measure loss – EDDC does it purely in “economic” terms and seems not to understand any other measure. Does one measure short-term, medium-term or long-term loss?
• DOES IT LINK? (have we linked this to other, similar, pieces of work within or outside the Council) Does it matter if it links? Surely, ground-breaking issues often link with nothing, but other things may later link with it.
Summary: You are the Scrutiny Committee: you can scrutinise anything you think needs scrutinising as long as you are not simply troublemaking for the sake of it. You should not be bound by a narrow-minded check list!
http://eastdevon.gov.uk/media/1178172/260615-scrutiny-agenda-combined.pdf
