6 March (Part 2) - Scrutiny of the group that scrutinises the committee that scrutinises the council
Complicated isn’t it? The council has a Scrutiny Function Sub-Group to scrutinise the Scrutiny Committees that keep an eye on Cabinet decisions. Is it through lack of trust or is incompetence a problem?
Tuesdays are not a good day for me to be at a keyboard or a council meeting so I asked Nick Dowling if
he would kindly scrutinise the Scrutiny Sub-Group’s attempt to put the Scrutiny Committees under scrutiny
while all of them are scrutinised by the council leader. He did the same for me
last January.
On that occasion he was able to reveal the proof that Scrutiny Committees operate only if they
agree to dance at the end of Teresa O’Neill’s string. “The chairman let slip that the leader
wants the Conservative Group to discuss the proposals of Scrutiny Groups before they are
finally discussed by the Scrutiny Group.” Well she would wouldn’t she? Any dishonest council
leader would do the same thing.
Nick sent over his report with the request that I shorten it and liven it up a bit.
OK then; I’ll cut it down to size…
The meeting was scheduled for 45 minutes earlier than most meetings. The council
website said so but the screen in the foyer announced otherwise. Upon arrival at
the appointed time the Civic Centre was locked up.
The meeting was once again chaired by Maxine Fothergill and she ran a good show.
As before, the star performer was councillor Alan Deadman; hurray! And the booby
prize went to councillor John Davey - again. Boo and hiss!
There was a mess up with the microphones which was rectified in a professional manner
quite unlike the performance for which mayor Alan Downing, aided and
abetted by the purple faced Craske, is famed.
Then they tried to guess how much the meeting had cost the taxpayer. Far more
than if they hadn’t bothered presumably. Everyone went home at 20:14.
Those interested in whether the whole exercise was worth while will have to
trawl through Nick’s unexpurgated account.
Having dashed to make the blasted meeting of the council’s Overview and
Scrutiny Function Sub-Group yesterday evening I was rather surprised that the door to
the council was locked shut when I arrived at 18:45. I could see that the screen
in the foyer was advertising the meeting – at 18:30 it said, contrary to the
council’s website that had stated 18:45 – but the security guard was
nowhere in sight. Just as I was about to give up and go home councillor Philip
Read wandered down the stairs and seeing my predicament kindly let me in. Still
it does not reflect well on the council’s organisation that immediately prior to
a public meeting it was nigh on impossible to get in to view it. I do not think
it was a deliberate ploy but perhaps I should not give them any more ideas to
try and stifle democracy in the borough.
It transpired that the screen was wrong as the meeting
was only just officially starting as I sat down - sadly one begins to
expect this type of shoddiness from Bexley council and this lack of attention to
detail is symptomatic of a general malaise and inability to get things right.
Generally the meeting was a fairly jovial and light hearted affair. There was an
air of relative informality and I guess that we had chairman councillor Maxine
Fothergill to thank for that. There was a real exchange of views and it all
seemed to flow fairly naturally across agenda points and items. Yes, there was
some of the inevitable political point scoring but generally speaking a
consensus seemed to arise. It was probably the best
Bexley council meeting I have attended in the past three years, although given
the very low expectation level I have at these affairs perhaps it was inevitable
that at some juncture one of them should be alright.
Councillor Deadman (Labour, North End) was in fine form highlighting that many councillors do not
participate much in committee debates or ask questions at all. He went on to
point out that it will always be up to the majority party to pluck up the
courage to challenge their own cabinet and the current failure to do so has made
the entire overview and scrutiny function here at Bexley a barely tokenistic
affair. He saw information as the key given that without knowledge it is
somewhat difficult to have an overview of, or scrutinise, anything meaningfully.
As the council outsources almost all of their functions he felt it was vital
for the right experts to provide pertinent information and advice as well as it
also being sensible to get stakeholders involved as early on as possible in
order to ensure services are relevant and delivered appropriately. How true; and
it just about encapsulated everything that is wrong with the current state of affairs.
We had, in my experience, the unique occurrence of the council’s contact officer
for this group, Louise Peek, actually providing direct clarification and input
to the meeting itself. She highlighted that there was a facility for
pre-scrutiny already available but that it had not been taken up by any
councillors in the last few years. The Conservative deputy whip Sybil Camsey
knowledgeably agreed that councillors were not using the facility but she knew
it was there. She felt that it was up to the chair of committees to follow up
and challenge cabinet members. Easy to say but not something I have ever seen
demonstrated by any of our motley crew. Her final issue was that cabinet members
should explain fully why the will or will not accept a recommendation and update
councillors of progress or not on the recommendations. Sounded like common sense
to me and I am somewhat amazed that this is not normal practice here in Bexley
where the council is listening to and working for us.
It was left to councillor John Davey
(Conservative, Lesnes Abbey) in his own indomitable, and supremely dull,
style to explain that at Wandsworth the council officers did not need to come
back with answers to committee members questions as they were well briefed and
knew their stuff. Clearly the point being here that in Bexley this is far from
the case with the likes of Maureen Holkham et al. This was supported by
councillor Caroline Newton who also felt that cabinet members and council
officers should be much better prepared. I could not agree more with them and
given the amounts that some of them are paid we who pay those salaries really
deserve so much more.
Councillor Newton rather lost my admiration when she went on to indicate that
she felt the existing overview and scrutiny provisions did not really need to be
radically overhauled. She is a Conservative after all and works for the
Institute of Chartered Accountants so is bound to be somewhat risk averse.
Perhaps she also has one eye on her political masters as well and given that the
chump councillor Davey agreed with her it does not bode well for
anything meaningful to come out of this sub-group in the fullness of time.
Davey’s insightful contribution could be summed up by: more could be achieved with the existing provisions if they were better
implemented and used by his fellow councillors. Profound; or perhaps not! Indeed
councillor Chris Ball, from the public gallery, made the point that it would be
a greatly missed opportunity if the current overview and scrutiny system was not
overhauled and he emphasised that it would be much more beneficial to focus on
the form that could be achieved within known costs and budgets. Alas it appeared
that this was not anything the chairman was going to be very interested in.
Likewise councillor Stefano Borello’s idea that a chair position could be given
to the opposition party was met with a polite but total brush-off.
Councillor June Slaughter came in late – perhaps she had been caught out by the
early start to this meeting, or perhaps the building was still locked. She was having some difficulty following some of
the mumblings from the committee and asked for the microphones to be switched
on. In a glowing example of how this sort of thing should be handled the
offending councillor at the time – Howard Marriner - could not switch his on fast
enough and apologised profusely as did councillor Deadman when he later fell foul
of this faux pas as well.
Still in full drone mode councillor John Davey had more to say on saving the
council money via overview and scrutiny as councillors at Bromley had told him
that if it was done effectively the sky was the limit. He pointed out that Paul
Moore the Director of Customer & Corporate Services (cost to council tax payers,
£171,184) wanted to cut spending on overview and scrutiny – perhaps because
he realises what a pointless exercise it all is. Still, Davey thought that
savings could be achieved by taking council officers reports as read. And it is
cost cutting like this that he feels will save us all. I am afraid that I just
cannot take him very seriously.
The chairman, councillor Maxine Fothergill, then went on to read out her summary
report findings – costing heavens only knows what? This was actually a rather
boring and tedious exercise. At one point councillor Sybil Camsey felt she had
been misquoted and wanted to clarify her point. A hair splitting exercise of the
highest order but it did liven things up for a moment or two as some grovelling
and back-tracking was required by the chair. It was felt that good things were
emerging and feedback was requested from committee members on the ten page
appendix. We will wait with baited breath to see if anything actually comes of
it all.
The final item on the agenda related to the costs of the meeting which in true
Bexley style managed to convey very little and seemed to have more holes in its
logic than a sieve. The council estimated that the last meeting cost at least
£400 but could not indicate any facilities costs for heating, lighting, opening
the civic offices, etc.; well, here is an idea for them as they have a room
charge if you or I wanted to hire one for a meeting why do they not just
indicate that?
The council decided to use an approximation of pension costs but admitted that
not all employees are members of the pension scheme which could therefore have
an impact on their estimate. Given that they must know who works on the meeting
in order to arrive at the total number of hours it seems strange that they
cannot establish definitively whether the individuals concerned are in the
pension scheme or not and modify the cost accordingly. Of course the costs of
councillor participation were not approximated at all which seems somewhat
strange given that there were six times as many of them present as council officers.
Writing up the minutes took 1·5 hours which conveniently works out to 30 minutes
per page. Which if we assume a generous 500 words per A4 page gives us a typing
speed of about 17 words per minute. Not in the least impressive is it?
Still it is nice to know that fanciful guesses and any sort of a dodgy
rationale will suffice at Bexley council. Some things will never change!