To consider the annual Overview and Scrutiny Committee report 2023/24. 

106.1        Attention was drawn to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Annual Report 2023/24, circulated at Pages No. 61-75, which Members were asked to consider.

106.2        In proposing the report, the Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee advised that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee was critical to ensuring that the Council delivered high-quality statutory functions and met the broader promises to the electorate.  The annual report reflected the hard work carried out by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee over the past 12 months, including the excellent support from Officers across the Council.  The Committee was particularly pleased with its work in scrutinising the Council Plan inherited from the previous administration which had required Members to quickly get up to speed with the breadth and depth of the Council’s work and had involved hours of extra training.  The Committee had always been careful to reflect on the excellent work done by Members and Officers, but had also been robust where things needed further attention, details of which were set out in the report. One area that demanded immediate attention was the measurement of the Council’s work.  The current plan fell short and the Committee was eager to assist Lead Members and Officers in ensuring that delivery of the new Council Plan measures not only reflected the Council’s ambitions and desired impact but also facilitated scrutiny by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and other stakeholders.  The Committee was particularly enthusiastic about the Council's adoption of a high-performing organisation mantra which it believed would benefit all Members and Officers in addressing this issue. The Committee would work with Lead Members, Group Leaders and Officers over the coming months to ensure it was scrutinising the right things in the right way and in line with the new, exciting, ambitious Council Plan. 

106.3        A Member drew attention to Page No. 75, Appendix A of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Annual Report, which provided a flowchart on how to select a potential scrutiny review and raised concern there seemed to be a lot of hurdles to get through in order to qualify; in his view, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee should be free to choose whatever it wished to scrutinise and he felt that the first two questions in particular were restrictive.  In response, the Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee explained that the flowchart was not a prescriptive way of operating and was intended to be used as a guide.  It was not a process which had been followed over the last 12 months as the Committee had inherited its work programme from the previous administration.  The Committee was now starting to populate the programme for the forthcoming year and beyond and the flowchart was a tool which could help it to make decisions on what to take forward.  The Leader of the Council thanked the Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee for the report and the Committee’s hard work during the last year.

106.4        Accordingly, it was

RESOLVED          That the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Annual Report 2023/24 be NOTED.