Thinking about elected chairs

Posted on 26/06/2018 by Ed Hammond | chairing, chairs, governance and scrutiny, mhclg

One of the recommendations made by the Communities and Local Government Select Committee when they investigated overview and scrutiny was that councils experiment with the idea of directly elected chairs of overview and scrutiny committees. Of course, in a strict sense, this already happens. Councillors vote on appointments to scrutiny committees, including chair positions, at council AGM. What the Committee were after was something a little different – something that echoes similar reforms in Parliament in 2010, reforms which are generally seen as having led to something of a renaissance in the impact and effectiveness of Parliamentary select committees. To ...