The Communities and Local Government Select Committee has launched a national inquiry into the powers, functions, and effectiveness of local authority scrutiny arrangements and is inviting anyone with an opinion to write a submission before 10th March, 2017. We would strongly urge those working in overview and scrutiny to take some time to submit evidence to inquiry, including examples of work your local scrutiny committee has done. This provides a great forum to discuss the benefits and problems of scrutiny and an opportunity to reflect what the future of local government scrutiny should look like.
The government is interested in submissions on the following issues:
- How effective is scrutiny in holding executive to account;
- How politically impartial and independent are overview and scrutiny committees;
- How chairs and scrutiny committee members are selected;
- To what extent does scrutiny reflect the public voices;
- How are scrutiny committee work programmes developed;
- How supportive of scrutiny are the local leaders and senior officers;
- How effective is the scrutiny of external organisations;
- Which scrutiny models should be used in combined authorities;
- Scrutiny case-studies.
The full terms of reference can be found here
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