Category: News
Conducting remote scrutiny reviews
In our first guest blog of the year, Catherine Buckley from Knowsley Council explains how one scrutiny committee organised and undertook its first entirely remote task and finish review. Knowsley Council’s Children Scrutiny Committee kick-started their scrutiny year with a virtual workplanning session in June 2020 and voted for ‘Early Help and Parental Support’ as […]
Remote meetings: planning for permanence
We have spoken extensively to scrutiny and democratic services practitioners in recent months about how action to make the Regulations on remote meetings permanent would help to ensure that governance could be supported in a way that is more dynamic and flexible in future. Once the pandemic is over, being able to convene formal meetings […]
Reflections on the publication of the Ockenden report
The final report of the review carried out by Donna Ockenden into maternity care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital (SaTH) has just been published. It can be found here – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ockenden-review-of-maternity-services-at-shrewsbury-and-telford-hospital-nhs-trust. The report makes for grim reading. There are implications here for maternity services across England – and for health and care services more […]
A scrutiny team’s perspective on the impact of lockdown and experiences of restarting
In the latest in our series from scrutiny practitioners reflecting on their experiences during the pandemic, Merton’s scrutiny team provide some insights on how they have changed the way they work in response to 2020’s very challenging circumstances. When lockdown was announced, our first priority was to transfer the function to an online platform. […]
Under the spotlight – Dudley Council’s Covid-19 scrutiny process
In this guest blog, Kevin O’Keefe and Steve Griffiths (respectively Dudley Council’s Chief Executive and Democratic Services Manager) explain the council’s approach to scrutiny during the pandemic. At the start of lockdown in March, the Council recognised the key importance of maintaining proper levels of openness, transparency, democratic oversight and scrutiny during the Pandemic. […]
Conduct, civility and the Nolan Principles
Last week was officially Anti-Bullying Week. It was good to have a real-life example of the issues and dynamics involved in victimisation and harassment, in the form of the independent report into bullying alleged to have been carried out by the Home Secretary. It makes it a good time to reflect on whether there are […]
Scrutiny during the pandemic: Monmouthshire Council
In this guest blog, Robert McGowan, Policy and Scrutiny Officer at Monmouthshire Council, writes for us on practical experiences in carrying out vital scrutiny work on a topic of local importance during 2020. In March, when the first lockdown began, scrutiny came to an immediate halt. Given the organisation’s existing policy of flexible and home […]
Avoiding the risk of overload: focusing on business critical issues
For most scrutineers, the pace does not seem to have let up since March. Over the spring and summer scrutiny was constrained in the amount of formal work it could do – but that didn’t mean that nothing was happening. Now, the pressure is even more significant. For many councils a full suite of committee […]
Scrutiny of councils’ commercial activity – guidance and support reminder
You can’t have failed to notice that controversy around councils’ commercial activity has been in the news recently. Some councils have found themselves unexpectedly exposed to significant risk around their investments – caused in part by the impact of the pandemic, but partly by longer-standing issues. It’s generally accepted that councillor oversight of commercial activity […]
“Accountability Works!”: ten years on
In 2010, shortly before the General Election, the Centre for Public Scrutiny (as we then were) published “Accountability Works!” – a document which aimed to provide a comprehensive expression of what accountability and democracy looked like in public services at the turn of a new decade. We had planned, this year, to do a little […]