Issue - meetings

Scrutiny Annual Report

Meeting: 05/10/2021 - Council (Item 9)

9 Annual Report of the Scrutiny Committee pdf icon PDF 299 KB

To receive the Annual Report of the Scrutiny Committee.

Minutes:

Councillor Gregory, Chair of the Scrutiny Committee, presented the Committee’s annual report. He said its presentation had been delayed and the content referred to the work carried out in the municipal year 2020-21. The defining issue of the year had been the coronavirus; he said the Council had displayed institutional agility in responding to the pandemic under very challenging circumstances. He thanked officers for their contribution during this difficult year including the Assistant Director of Finance, the Business Support Officer, the Local Plan and New Communities Managers, the Development Manager and the Assistant Director for Corporate Services. One major work stream that had been developed in the past year included dedicated Local Plan Scrutiny meetings; this had been a great success and had added value to the process. Another was the scrutiny carried out on S106 issues and he thanked Councillors Jones and Criscione for their hard work. The Corporate Plan Delivery Plan had also been comprehensively scrutinised and would be continued to do so. In terms of self-improvement, he said the Centre for Public Scrutiny had carried out a review and the Committee had been asked to focus its attention on the Executive to ensure they were held to account. Reservations were still held regarding the Executive’s reluctance to share information, and Scrutiny would continue to ask for detailed, specific and measurable outcomes. He thanked members of the Committee from all groups for their continued efforts to ensure that effective scrutiny was carried out.