Introduction
A fundamental principle of scrutiny is that it operates without direct decision-making power. However, the notion that meaningful change can only be achieved through the authority to make decisions is a misconception. Scrutiny plays a vital role in shaping policy, holding decision-makers to account, and driving improvements through challenge and influence. Yet, this lack of formal power can sometimes lead to frustration and, when misunderstood, may be wrongly perceived as a limitation or even a reason for scrutiny’s ineffectiveness.
This practice guide explores proven approaches that councils have used to assess and articulate their impact, demonstrating how scrutiny can shape better governance and service delivery. This content applies to all tiers of local authority. Additionally, it provides practical guidance on how to effectively capture and communicate the value of scrutiny through an engaging and insightful annual report. Being able to tell the narrative of scrutiny to Full Council and stakeholders helps to improve the effectiveness of scrutiny by increasing its visibility and buy-in.
What impact should scrutiny be looking for?
Effective scrutiny is more than just reviewing decisions – it is about driving meaningful change, improving services, and ensuring better outcomes for residents and communities. To assess and in turn communicate the impact of your scrutiny, consider the following provocations:
How have your efforts made a difference?
Scrutiny should actively influence decision-making, ensuring transparency, accountability, and informed policies. Reflect on instances where scrutiny has challenged assumptions, provided valuable insights, or strengthened governance.
How have your efforts initiated change?
Consider how scrutiny has prompted new ways of thinking, influenced strategic direction, or led to tangible actions. Change may not always be immediate, but scrutiny should create momentum for long-term improvements.
How have your efforts improved performance?
Evaluate how scrutiny has contributed to service enhancements, efficiency gains, or better resource allocation. Identify areas where scrutiny has led to measurable improvements in delivery and effectiveness.
How have your efforts affected outcomes for residents and communities?
Scrutiny should always be rooted in public interest. Assess whether your work has directly or indirectly improved the quality of life for residents, addressed community concerns, or ensured fairer and more effective public services.
How have your efforts impacted upon policy and services?
Examine the role of scrutiny in shaping policy development, refining service provision, and ensuring that decisions are based on robust evidence. Consider where scrutiny has influenced changes to policy direction or service design for the benefit of the community.
By reflecting on these questions, local authorities can better demonstrate the value of scrutiny, strengthen their approach, and reinforce their role in fostering good governance and continuous improvement.
What does impact look like?
Intangible impacts
Do not underestimate the power of the intangible impact of scrutiny influencing governance, public trust, and decision-making in ways that are not always immediately visible – these are not necessarily measurable and at times they might be almost invisible, but they do contribute to the value and impact of scrutiny.
Scrutiny reinforces the principle that decision-makers are held to account, fostering a culture of transparency.
The practice of scrutiny can encourage a culture of continuous improvement and an open, evidence-based approach to governance, promoting a learning culture among officers and elected members.
Effective scrutiny reassures the public that their concerns are being addressed, improving trust in local government and democratic institutions.
If scrutiny does not always result in major policy shifts, it can still refine decision-making processes by encouraging critical thinking and a more balanced consideration of different viewpoints.
Scrutiny provides councillors with a platform to challenge executive decisions, increasing their sense of purpose and engagement in governance.
Through evidence gathering and consultations, scrutiny encourages collaboration between local authorities, partner organisations, and communities.
By ensuring that residents and community groups have opportunities to participate in governance, their experiences helping to shape policies and services; bringing decision-making in alignment with the needs of people.
Making recommendations
Recommendations are the most direct lever that scrutiny can pull to effect change. Recommendations can come from scrutiny reviews, usually with supporting reports, or can come from committee considerations.
How to write recommendations
The magic of conjuring recommendations from the scrutiny process is something of an art, but it doesn’t have to be. Simply put scrutineers should be on the lookout for opportunities when considering evidence in committee or during a review. These opportunities could be how to improve an approach, a process, or an outcome. Or they could combine aspects of all three. It is most likely that in the triangulation of evidence that gaps or unintended consequences will be uncovered. These are often a rich source of material from which to make recommendations.
When making recommendations consider how a future committee will know if they have been implemented. Imprecise language, for example, ‘improving’ might reflect the intention, but it is unlikely to result in meaningful change. Recommendations benefit from being SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
Poor recommendation – example 1
An example of a well-intentioned, but poor recommendation could be:
‘Improve the recycling rate.’
This leads to ambiguity – what sort of recycling? What does ‘improve’ mean e.g. more plastic or less weight? What counts as an improvement? When will the committee expect this improvement? Who should report back?
Stronger recommendation – example 2
A better recommendation would be:
‘Improve the percentage [realistic] of food waste recycled [measurable] in x and y wards [specific] from 65% to 67% [achievable] in the next six months [timely].’
This recommendation is much stronger as it can be revisited at a later stage and monitored to ascertain impact.
Ambition in recommendations
It can help in the development of recommendations to be clear about what scrutiny is trying to change. The practice of separating the broad intention from the specific ask helps to articulate both. This is useful as several recommendations may be clustered against the same ambition. In addition, this practice allows scope for recommendations to be evaluated against their contribution to the ambition, and if necessary amended or added to in future.
In presenting recommendations, tables are helpful, and many councils detail responsibility and time, for example:
Recommendations should engage with financial realities particularly where a recommendation will require additional expenditure. It is likely to help ensure the acceptance of the recommendation if funding sources can be identified. This could also include prioritisation of resources, for example where investing in prevention has a proven ability to reduce expenditure overall. However, it should not be required for scrutiny to fully cost all of its recommendations; this is an issue for the executive.
Monitoring recommendations
It is usual that after agreement at a scrutiny committee, recommendations are submitted to the Executive. The Executive or Cabinet has to respond to recommendations within two months of them being made. Recommendations are ‘asks’ there is no ability to require decision makers to adopt the points made in recommendations.
It is not reasonable to expect that a substantive response will be provided at this stage, but practice will vary from council to council.
The position with scrutiny’s recommendations to partners can be more complicated. Partners are, in general, not obliged to respond, but prior liaison will make the risk of this happening less likely.
A response to a recommendation from a decision-maker should consist of:
- A clear commitment to delivering the measure of success within the timescale set out;
- A commitment to be held to account on that delivery in a specified timeframe
- Where a recommendation is not accepted, the provision of detailed, substantive reasons why not.
It may be that arrangements for responses to recommendations forms part of an executive scrutiny protocol. For more information on executive-scrutiny protocols see Relationships for Effective Governance and Scrutiny – A Practice guide
Tracking recommendations
It is not enough to make great recommendations; scrutiny needs to have a systematic approach to evaluating implementation. There are different approaches to follow up depending upon the nature of the work and recommendations. Some councils have a regular recommendation tracker, which can be aligned to the work programme. It may also be useful to have specific reports back when significant pieces of work have been undertaken for example recommendations from a task group might warrant a longer report to address progress and developments. In some cases, scrutiny might even wish to undertake further deep dive work to review progress against recommendations, and even refine if needed. The approach taken should be proportionate to the work that scrutiny has invested in developing the recommendations.
Recommendations should not be monitored indefinitely. Once scrutiny is aware of progress and impact, recommendations should stop being monitored. This is likely to be after an appropriate time to give scope for implementation. Otherwise, on-going monitoring can become an industry and scrutiny can start to drown under the weight of progress reports on it’s on work.
Recommendation journey
Case study - Hackney Council: Beyond monitoring recommendations
“In Hackney we take a range of approaches to track the effectiveness of our scrutiny work. Demonstrating that scrutiny is impactful is vital for ensuring ongoing engagement from stakeholders, especially the community. Monitoring the outcomes of scrutiny work is essential for assessing its impact and ensuring that issues or topics remain a priority when media attention or the high-profile interest has subsided.
In line with the traditional review of the recommendations from a scrutiny review shortly after receiving the executive response, we have found that ongoing monitoring of the progress of these recommendations plays a critical role in shaping and informing local policy and practice, as well as enhancing the oversight of identified risks. Alongside receiving progress updates from decision-makers themselves, engaging as widely as possible with residents and key stakeholders when assessing the achievement of outcomes will provide a broader understanding of impact.
Many topics in scrutiny can be by their very nature complex and the process of measuring the impact equally challenging. For scrutiny work that takes longer to show its impact or might be hard to quantify, revisiting a topic or issue will keep it in the local policy spotlight to provide a catalyst for change. Using our convening power to monitor the outcome sometimes involves bringing local stakeholders together to discuss the recommendations, key issues, challenges and opportunities; to identify the impact and ultimately improve outcomes for residents.
Additionally, we may also continue to monitor outcomes by including a regular update for an item in our work programme. This supports our assessment of service performance and helps to identify when more in-depth scrutiny is needed.
Scrutiny Commission Chairs also hold regular catch-up meetings with the Executive and senior managers to check in on progress against scrutiny recommendations and suggestions, and against the delivery of policies, strategies, or service reviews. This allows for a better understanding of ongoing developments and helps determine the right time for formal scrutiny involvement when updates might not yet be ready for public discussion.”
Scrutiny Annual report
It is good practice to present an annual scrutiny report to full council. This activity helps to put scrutiny in the spotlight for all members and gives the opportunity to sing about impact and successes. In Scrutiny’s ‘moment in the sun’ at full council it is usual for the chair or chairs of scrutiny committees to present the report, highlighting notable work over the course of the year as well as significant impact or change.
All annual reports are different, and there is no standard approach. This reflects the culture and nuance of different councils. The following steps detail one approach to preparing your annual report, and importantly, telling the narrative of scrutiny. Whilst ‘annual reports’ heavily imply a focus upon only one year, the reality of making recommendations and then having them implemented is likely to mean that projects can span more than one year, or that activities from a year before need to be reported in a later year.
Introduction: Setting the Context
Start with a brief explanation of the role of scrutiny in supporting governance and service excellence. Then expand on the deliberate decisions that scrutiny has taken on what to focus upon. This section does not need to be verbose but can outline the ambition and direction that scrutiny has aimed to meet over the year. It should also describe scrutiny’s alignment with local authority objectives and challenges. Many annual reports present this overview in the voice of the Chair or Chairs of Scrutiny.
Metrics
One of the pitfalls of annual reports is that they can focus too much on descriptors of process and even reproduce parts of minutes. However, it is still important to present key statistics.
Some examples of this are below:
- How many committees – how often have they met?
- How many members of the public have spoken to scrutiny?
- How many task groups, on what subjects?
- How many witnesses have task groups spoken to?
- How many briefings or site or service visits?
- How many recommendations % agreed by Cabinet or Executive?
The metrics offer a limited insight into impact but are useful to record and track over several years. If for example the number of call-ins goes significantly up, or down, there may be underlying issues which would benefit from further investigation.
Scrutiny listening
A key principle of scrutiny is amplifying the voice and concerns of the public. By focusing on the ways that scrutiny has listened to the public in the last year in the annual report, attention can be paid to how scrutiny is connecting with residents. This section could also go further and talk about site or service visits, as well as interactions with stakeholders and partners to the council.
Areas of Impact
This section serves as an overview of the tangible effects that the scrutiny process has achieved within the local authority. It should clearly outline the specific areas where scrutiny has made a difference, detailing how efforts have led to improvements in various services or issues.
Quantifying the results wherever possible can greatly enhance the impact of the report. For example, stating that there has been a “20% reduction in service complaints” or a “15% improvement in operational efficiency” provides clear, measurable evidence of the benefits derived from the scrutiny process. Such figures not only validate the effectiveness of scrutiny but also help stakeholders grasp the scale of the improvements achieved.
This section should present compelling stories that demonstrate how the scrutiny process contributes to better governance, decision making, and improved service delivery. By clearly detailing where scrutiny has made a difference, local authorities can ensure that its role is fully understood and valued, reinforcing its importance in shaping policies and services that benefit communities.
Case study - Devon County Council - annual report approach to presenting impact
Corporate Priorities
This section provides the opportunity to outline how scrutiny has considered and had impact upon the wider system. It can also connect future priorities to strategic challenges or goals, such as climate resilience or financial sustainability.
Whilst scrutiny should not be tied to the Executive forward plan for all activities, it should be aware of its contribution to good governance and improved decision making, for example:
The future
This is the opportunity to look forward and set out some plans for the next year – this might refer to current work underway, but not yet reported or understood for impact.
You may also wish to report on how your scrutiny protocol is working (if you have one).
Practical tips for writing your annual report:
Focus on impact and outcomes to make it as readable as possible. Think about the audience. Less is often more.
Where possible, anchor the work of scrutiny in stories of change.
A picture can tell a thousand words – consider Including charts, graphs, infographics and photographs to make key points accessible and to tell the scrutiny story.
Telling the story of scrutiny
The role of full council
Maintaining open communication between scrutiny committees and the full council is essential. Every member of the council should be kept informed about the committees’ work. Scrutiny is independent of full council and cannot be required or directed to undertake work. The business of scrutiny is for scrutiny members to determine. However, it is important for scrutiny to work with all the members of the council individually and in total to amplify the impact of scrutiny activities.
Many local authorities’ constitutions require scrutiny committees to present an annual report to the Full Council. In addition to the annual report, scrutiny committees may also submit individual reports on specific issues as needed. These targeted reports alert the Full Council to important matters that might require immediate attention or further discussion, supplementing the broader picture provided in the annual report.
To achieve this, scrutiny committees can regularly provide formal updates, including recommendations and reports, or these can be amalgamated and appended to the annual report. Either way the council should be kept informed about the impact of the work of scrutiny and how members can get involved.
Communicating the value of scrutiny is not only vital for internal governance but also for engaging the wider community. Regular reporting helps ensure that the entire council is informed about critical issues, and in some cases, it also serves to inform the public and build trust in the local authority’s processes.
Communicating with the press
Scrutiny should also consider how to communicate with residents about the positive work that it has undertaken. Many Councils will have a communications team, although there may be limited resource available for scrutiny. It may be that Scrutiny officers or members have to draft their press releases themselves.
Engaging with media: how to convey scrutiny impact to a wider audience
Creating a press release is a relatively simple task, and while there are conventions in how they are presented, what is most important is that you present information clearly.
Get your news line
Firstly you want to concentrate on the key line of the story you are telling. Think about what the most interesting aspect of the story is. If it is a story about a scrutiny process improving something, your line is likely to be the outcome, like this:
“Twenty percent reduction in speeding offences”
Think about the following:
Who – who did this
What – what happened?
When – when/what is the timeframe
Where – the location?
How?
Try to condense it down into a one line story imparting only the most important details. You don’t need to answer all the questions, just enough to make it clear what the story is, like this:
“Councillors’ study of traffic calming in Trumpton leads to 20 per cent reduction in speeding”
Building your story
Now you are going think of the rest of your press release as an inverse pyramid, to make sure you keep the other important details of your story close to the top of your release.
“Trumpton Council’s speed calming measures in Trumpton, Camberwick Green, and Chigley have all seen 20 per cent reductions in speeding, following a study by Trumpton Council’s overview and scrutiny committee.
“The Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) made recommendations in June, after studying the existing traffic calming measures, following complaints from residents last year.
“The study considered speed in both 20 mph zones, and 30 mph zones, and recommended new built out kerbs, road humps and rumble strips should be implemented.
“Following their installation in June, the OSC has examine speed data for the areas provided by the council’s traffic and roads team and found an average 20 per cent reductions in speeds.”
Quotes
It is a good idea to make sure your press release includes quotes from at least one – but preferably two – people.
Quotes can be used to get your message across again, and to express some views or emotions that are unlikely to come across in the largely factual material that is in the rest of your press release. Include quotes from councillors, ideally both scrutiny and executive.
“Reducing speeds makes a huge difference to our roads, making them safer – but also making neighbourhoods in Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley much safer.”
“Our Overview and Scrutiny committee looked at the problem in detail, and was able to recommend new speed calming measures.”
More technical details
Use the bottom of the press release to provide more technical information that you think may be important. Some press release include a note section at the bottom.
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