Agenda item
Report from Chairs of Scrutiny Committees
No reports to this meeting.
Minutes:
Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee
Councillor Kelcher, Chair of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee thanked the Mayor and said what a privilege it was to be speaking at Councillor Ahmed’s first full council as Mayor.
Councillor Kelcher stated that the two scrutiny committees were responsible for some of the most important activities on the Council. He stated that, last year, scrutiny published three task group reports, instituted one call-in, made numerous recommendations and quizzed the leader and all of his cabinet. He drew Members’ attention to the Annual Report of Scrutiny.
Councillor Kelcher highlighted key reforms and changes to improve the way Scrutiny worked. He stated that one Scrutiny Committee had brought about a series of challenges, most acutely that of capacity.
He stated that the old committee’s workload has been divided into two, and the total number of annual meetings increased to twelve. He stated that the Resources and Public Realm Committee would look at the Council’s big spending projects, crime and the environment – whilst the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee would particularly focus on health issues.
He stated that the Council’s Scrutiny function had received an assessment from a Local Government Association peer review team. Firstly, the LGA team noted that there was often frustration, occasionally leading to distrust, between members and officers regarding the content of reports. He stated that most of this was entirely innocent and accidental.
Secondly, Councillor Kelcher stated that the LGA felt that the choice of topics was done slightly haphazardly, with lots of worthy things being discussed, but the full list not being thought through strategically. Councillor Kelcher stated that scrutiny officers had recently organised events for each committee where Strategic Directors gave an outline of the main issues in their departments, and members could also suggest any topic they felt worthy.
In discussions with LGA scrutiny experts, Councillor Kelcher concluded that it had become clear that verbal recommendations made in Committee meetings by a vote of members had much greater standing in other authorities. Previously recommendations made in this way by Scrutiny in Brent had not made it on to the papers for Cabinet to respond to. He pledged that, from now on, recommendations made at committee would be much clearer and Members would insist these were followed up.
Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee
Councillor Ketan Sheth, Chair of the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee, stated that the first meeting of the Committee would take place next week. He stated that this was the first time that housing, social care, public health, children’s services and the NHS had been brought within the scope of one scrutiny committee in Brent.
Councillor Sheth stated that he saw the Committee’s mission as not only to hold the Cabinet and Council partners in the NHS to account for their policies and decision-making, but to understand the impact of these decisions on the local people who elected members to represent them.
He stated that the new committee would be scrutinising some key policies of the Cabinet. The main item the Committee would look at initially would be the landlord licensing scheme.
Landlord licensing was a flagship policy for Cabinet and it was extremely important in a borough where almost one third of households were living in the private rented sector. He stated that if there were recommendations that his committee could make to the Cabinet to improve the scheme then the committee would make this clear.
Councillor Sheth stated that it was almost a year since the Cabinet agreed to set up an ethical lettings agency in the borough. He said that his committee would also look at this at its first meeting.