Agenda item

The Council noted the Overview and Scrutiny Annual Report 2022/23 (for copy see file of Minutes).

Councillor R Crute, Chair of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board informed the Council that the report covered the period of the former Chair of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board and invited the former Chair of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board, Councillor C Martin to present the report.

Councillor C Martin, former Chair of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board presented the report to Council.

Councillor Martin informed Council that the report recapped the fantastic work scrutiny had done over the year.  Councillor Martin thanked officers for the production of the report, the Monitoring Officer, all of the officers who had supported Overview and Scrutiny and the Chairs and Vice Chairs for leading on the work and all those involved in contributing to scrutiny, providing a critical friend to the Executive.

Councillor Martin thanked Councillor C Lines as his Vice Chair of Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board who had been very supportive and had pushed hard to deliver the agenda of overhauling the scrutiny process.

Councillor Martin highlighted some of his achievements as Chair and raised his biggest regret from this time period.

Councillor Martin informed Council that his ambition was for scrutiny to have a bigger role in developing policy to get Members ahead of the policy making process so they could set out what good policy looked like for their communities and also provide effective challenge.

Effort had been put in to do more focused work on developing the council’s budget, doing some deep dives into some particular areas and providing some specific recommendations that fed into the budget.

While the full outturn report had been considered by scrutiny Councillor Martin considered it to be an oddity that scrutiny spent a lot of time discussing the approaching budget, but very little on how the council actually delivered that budget across the whole organisation.

Councillor Martin considered that Members would not be doing their job properly in scrutiny unless the executive were uncomfortable with the debates they were having and he had no doubt that that the agendas he encouraged and facilitated during his tenure did that.

Councillor Martin’s biggest regret was not having more opposition members as part of the leadership of scrutiny, although he was proud that he was the first chair of scrutiny to have a vice chair from the opposition.

In concluding, Councillor Martin wished the best of luck to the new leadership of scrutiny.

Councillor C Lines, Vice Chair of Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board thanked Councillor Martin for his strong and fair leadership as Chair of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Management Board that allowed all Members to contribute fully to discussions and debate.

Councillor C Marshall informed Council that scrutiny was a way in which all non-Cabinet Members had the opportunity to challenge and influence the decision makers.  Councillor Marshall placed on record his Group’s thanks to every Member who had contributed to the work of scrutiny and thanked Councillor Martin for the role he played.

Resolved:

That the report be received.