Government says no to extension of statutory scrutiny officer role to all councils

The Government has rejected calls from MPs for the extension of the requirement for a statutory scrutiny officer to all councils.

The proposal had been contained in a Communities and Local Government Select Committee report, Effectiveness of local authority overview and scrutiny committees, published in December 2017.

MPs on the CLG committee had suggested that such a post-holder should have a seniority and profile of equivalence to the council’s corporate management team. Statutory scrutiny officers should also be required to make regular reports to full council on the state of scrutiny, explicitly identifying any areas of weakness and the work carried out to rectify them, they argued.

However, in its formal response the Government reiterated its view that decisions about the allocation of resources for the scrutiny function were best made at a local level. “Each council is best-placed to know which arrangements will suit its own individual circumstances. It is not a case of one size fits all."

It added: “The key requirement for effective scrutiny is that the culture of the council is right. Where councils recognise the benefits effective scrutiny can bring, and put in place suitable arrangements, it is working well. Local authorities with a strong culture of scrutiny may invite regular reports to full council on the state of scrutiny in the council and this idea will be reflected in the updated guidance.”

The Government meanwhile said it accepted that in some councils scrutiny was “not functioning as well as might be expected”.

Its response accepted that its guidance on scrutiny committees, issued in 2006, should be updated. New guidance will be published later this year including:

• A recommendation that scrutiny committees report to full council;
• Clarification that members of the executive should not participate in scrutiny other than as witnesses;
• A call for councils to judge each request from scrutiny committees for access to sensitive documents on its merits and to not refuse as a matter of course. Discussions will be held with the sector to “get a better understanding of the issues some scrutiny committees appear to have in accessing information and whether there are any steps that the Government could take to alleviate this”;
• Clarification that support officers should be able to operate independently and provide impartial advice. “It will also stress the need for councils to recognise and value the scrutiny function and the ways in which it can increase a council’s effectiveness. However, the Government believes that each council should decide for itself how to resource scrutiny committees, including how much access to senior officers is appropriate to enable them to function effectively.”
• Making it clear that scrutiny committees should actively encourage public participation.

In other comments the Government response said:

• Further consideration will be given to a recommendation for a pilot scheme where the impact of elected chairs on scrutiny’s effectiveness can be monitored and its merits considered. The Government said it accepted that, in some instances, the election, rather than the appointment, of a chair might help ensure that the right individual is selected, but felt that this was a decision for every council to make for itself. It will recommend that every council bears in mind when deciding on a method for selecting a chair that it is free to elect one. Discussions will be held with the sector, including the Local Government Association and the Centre for Public Scrutiny.
• It rejected calls from the CLG committee for councils to be required to publish a summary of resources allocated to scrutiny, using expenditure on executive support as a comparator. Many councils did not have dedicated scrutiny support staff so this would make quantifying the support scrutiny committees receive very difficult.
• It would not accept the MPs' recommendation for monitoring systems to be put in place and consideration to be given as to whether the support to committees needed to be reviewed and refreshed. The Government also rejected calls for it to write to the CLG committee in a year’s time detailing its assessment of the value for money of its investment in the Local Government Association and on the wider effectiveness of local authority scrutiny committees.
• In terms of scrutiny committees’ ability to require service providers’ attendance at meetings, "when councils are tendering contracts with external bodies they should carefully consider including requirements to ensure they are as open and transparent as appropriate. Ultimately, however, it is up to each council to decide how best to hold to account those who run its services.”

The CLG Committee had also made recommendations in relation to arrangements for local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and metro mayors.

For LEPs, the MPs had recommended that upper tier councils, and combined authorities where appropriate, should be able to monitor the performance and effectiveness of LEPs through their scrutiny committees. The latter should also be able to require LEPs to provide information and attend committee meetings as required.

The Government said the MHCLG Non-Executive Director Review, published in October 2017, had looked at a range of governance issues for LEPs and made a series of recommendations, which the Government had accepted in full and was now implementing.

It also pointed out that the review had acknowledged that each LEP had their own arrangements to reflect legal structure, the complexity and needs of the locality and local requirements to ensure value for money, engagement and democratic accountability. This review had concluded that it was not appropriate to be too prescriptive on the specific arrangements that all LEPs needed to adopt due to the variation in LEP operating models.

The Government said it would write to the select committee following the conclusion of a ministerial review in to LEPs, which it had committed to carrying out in the Industrial Strategy White Paper.

The select committee had meanwhile expressed concern that effective scrutiny of metro mayors would be hindered by under-resourcing and had called on the Government to commit more funding for this purpose. The MPs said that when agreeing further devolution deals and creating executive mayors, the Government must make clear that scrutiny was a fundamental part of any deal and that it must be adequately resourced and supported.

The Government said it accepted this recommendation. It noted that at the Budget it was announced that it would make available to mayoral combined authorities with elected mayors a £12m fund for 2018-19 and 2019-20, to boost the new mayors’ capacity and resources. “Combined Authorities could use some of this resource to ensure that scrutiny and accountability arrangements within the CAs are effectively resourced and supported.”

It added that the recent Combined Authorities (Overview and Scrutiny Committees, Access to Information and Audit Committees) Order 2017, developed with assistance from the Centre for Public Scrutiny and the National Audit Office, provided for the rules of operation for local overview and scrutiny and audit committees to robustly hold combined authorities and mayors to account.

“The order ensures that there are strong scrutiny arrangements in place consistently across every combined authority area and sets out clear requirements, strengthened appropriately to match the new powers and budgets being devolved, for the arrangement of overview and scrutiny and audit committees in all combined authorities,” the Government said.

It added that local democratic accountability, including through the scrutiny of directly-elected mayors, was “a crucial and fundamental aspect of devolution”.