Agenda item

To consider the Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s Annual Report.  

17.1           Attention was drawn to the report, circulated at Pages No. 16-39, which set out the draft Annual Overview and Scrutiny Report 2017/18.  Members were asked to consider the report.

17.2           The Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee felt that the report demonstrated the breadth of coverage provided by the Committee.  The work undertaken should give assurance to Members – and the communities they served – that the Committee more than fulfilled its Terms of Reference in ensuring that the Council was open and transparent and held accountable for its decision-making.  In terms of specific pieces of work undertaken, he indicated that the adoption of the new Economic Development and Tourism Strategy in June 2017 was the result of a dedicated Overview and Scrutiny Committee Working Group.  He believed that the value of the Committee was maximised in shaping policy and strategy and the Economic Development and Tourism Strategy was now helping to drive one of the Council’s key priority areas.  As Members would be aware, the recent review of the water supply outage was possibly the Committee’s highest profile piece of work for a number of years.  As Chair he was extremely proud of how the Committee had conducted itself during the public hearing which had lasted for several hours.  Questioning had been robust but fair and he also made reference to the willing engagement from other agencies, particularly Severn Trent Water.  Over recent years, the Committee had also reviewed its own effectiveness and the benefit of that could be seen during the hearing, especially in terms of the quality of the supplementary questions that had been asked.  In addition, the Committee received the Council Plan performance tracker on a quarterly basis and valued this as an excellent tool to monitor progress against actions.  The Committee had continually challenged the performance information and had helped to drive a proactive plan for tackling enviro-crimes, an improvement plan for Development Services and the development of a Planning Enforcement Plan.  With regard to the coming year, the Committee had been tasked by the Council to monitor the delivery of the Development Services Improvement Plan; it looked forward to receiving the report on the water outage and the summary of lessons learnt; and it would be monitoring the refreshed Council Plan which was on the Agenda for this evening’s meeting.  The Overview and Scrutiny Committee always held a mirror up to itself to ensure it continued to add value - for example, the introduction of pre-briefings prior to Committee meetings over the last couple of years had helped Members to focus on what was really important - and it had also received independent critique from an external facilitator; he provided assurance there would be more of this in the future. 

17.3           With regard to the review of the water outage, the Leader of the Council indicated that he had sat in on some of the hearing and had also been very impressed by the way the Overview and Scrutiny Committee had gone about this task.  Whilst the various authorities participating in the review had been made aware of the initial questions, at times when the response had been unsatisfactory, Members had pursued them with diligence and scrutiny and he thanked the Committee for its hard work.  The Chair thanked his Vice-Chair, and the Officers and Members that supported the Committee, for their hard work over the past year.  Accordingly it was

RESOLVED          That the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Annual Report 2017/18 be NOTED.