Agenda item
Member Scrutiny Champion - Update Report
Minutes:
The
Chairman welcomed the Scrutiny Champion, Cllr A.N.Woolcock,
to today’s meeting to provide Members with a verbal update on the scrutiny
process.
Cllr
Woolcock advised the meeting that he had made a similar presentation to the Chair
and Vice Chair Forum on 12 December 2018.
He felt that the scrutiny process was being undertaken quite well within
the Authority, but could still be improved.
To this end a training session on chairing skills had been arranged for
1 March 2018. Cllr Woolcock advised of
the different ways in which scrutiny was undertaken and that local authorities
in Northern Ireland did not have scrutiny at all. He believed that it was
important for the Authority to scrutinise outside organisations particularly those
to which the Authority provided funding.
As an example he referred to the Policy and Resources Scrutiny Committee
held on 31st January, 2018 where the work of the Public Services
Board was scrutinised.
Cllr
Woolcock also drew the Committee’s attention to the Authority’s Constitution,
which stated that Members could only speak for 5 minutes. This he felt was not conducive to good
scrutiny and suggested that consideration be given to amending the
Constitution.
Members
agreed that additional training would be useful for Chairs and Vice Chairs but
that the Democratic Services Committee would benefit from training on
Constitutional issues. The Committee
agreed that the Authority’s Constitution required amendment to take into
account the scrutiny process.
It
was noted that following the training for Chairs and Vice Chairs training would
be undertaken on a Committee by Committee basis for scrutiny members.
RESOLVED: That the Monitoring Officer
be asked to consider amending the Authority’s Constitution in line with the
Committee’s views as outlined above.
Supporting documents:
- DSC Report 010218 - Update Report Member Scrutiny Champion, item 2. PDF 68 KB
- Appendix 1 - Member Scrutiny Champion - A.Woolcock Report, item 2. PDF 132 KB