Agenda item

Report attached.

Members considered a joint report of Councillors Noordad Aziz, Stephen Button and Kate Walsh, Chairs of the Resources, Communities and Wellbeing and Special Overview and Scrutiny Committees respectively, requesting that Cabinet gave consideration to and provided comments on the work programmes for Overview and Scrutiny for 2025/26.

Councillor Noordad Aziz provided a brief introduction to the report and draft work programmes and highlighted the consultations that had taken place to develop them.

Councillor Khan expressed disappointment that many of the Opposition suggestions for scrutiny topics had not been included in the draft programmes.  He also commented that only a limited number of suggestions had been submitted by members of the public and queried whether more could be done to engage the public in democratic processes such as this.  In addition, he queried whether suggestions for topics raised in-year could be added to the work programmes.  The Leader of the Council responded that the usual broad-based consultation procedure had been followed for 2025/26, but that it might be possible to try different approaches in the future.  He added that the lack of public responses might be an indicator of overall satisfaction with the controlling administration’s work.  Councillor Aziz provided some examples of where public feedback had influenced the choice of topics made.  He also confirmed that suggestions for new topics could be accepted in-year, if appropriate.

Approval of the report was not considered to be a key decision.

Reasons for Decision

At the beginning of each municipal year, the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committees each agreed a work programme for the year.

The process for agreeing the work programme was set out in Overview and Scrutiny Procedure Rule C6(a), as follows;

“The chair and vice chair of each overview and scrutiny committee will meet with the Cabinet within four weeks of each Annual Meeting to discuss the Cabinet’s policy priorities for the coming year. The chairs and vice chairs will propose a draft work programme for their committee within two weeks of that meeting. The draft work programmes will be submitted to the next following meeting of the Cabinet for comment and the draft work programme for each overview and scrutiny committee will then be submitted to the next following meeting of that committee (together with any comments or recommendations from the Cabinet) for approval.”

Any comments received from Cabinet would be considered at the next meetings of the Committees.

The work programmes had been developed following consideration of the Council’s guide for selecting items for scrutiny and consultation including:

• Emails to all Councillors;
• Suggestions sought from all service managers;
• Social media coverage for public suggestions; and
• An informal meeting between the Leader of the Council and the Chair and Vice-Chairs of the Scrutiny Committees.

There had been forty-six requests for items received for consideration for Scrutiny from Service Heads, Councillors and members of the public.  Items of a similar nature had been merged.  These items had been discussed in depth between the Scrutiny Chairs and the Leader of the Council before producing the work programmes.  It should be noted that far too many suggested items had been received to be included in the work programmes and therefore, some items had been rejected on this basis.

Several items, including statutory items and previously agreed standing items, had been included in the work programmes and these were listed at the end of Appendix 1 to the report.

Items which had not been deemed suitable for Scrutiny have not been included in the programmes.

The Chairs had sought to provisionally allocate items to specific meetings.  However, these might be subject to change during the year.

As in previous years, additional items could be added to the work programmes as the year progressed following scrutiny procedure rules.

The three Overview and Scrutiny Work Programmes were set out in full at Appendix 1 to the report.

All suggested items (including those rejected and reasons for rejection) could be seen in Appendix 2 to the report.

There were no alternative options for consideration or reasons

Resolved                                    -    That Cabinet notes, without comment, the Work Programmes for the Overview and Scrutiny Committees for 2025/26, as attached to the report.