Scrutiny commissions
Every year the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and sub-committees agree on areas for in depth investigation and review. For each of these topics an individual commission (a working group) with between three and five non-cabinet councillors is set up.
A commission can look into any area of council services. In the past commissions have looked at topics such as the provision of respite care and how to improve the housing benefit service. To give further examples, recent commissions have looked at the provision for children with special educational needs and equalities and diversity issues.
The commission will sometimes co-opt other (non-councillor) members, for example representatives from local voluntary organisations, interest groups or specialists in the field. This can be very helpful to inform the commission of the subject area and provide a different perspective on the issues involved.
The commission will start by deciding on the terms of reference ie. identifying the topics they want to look at and will plan a programme of meetings to which they will often invite speakers from interest groups, voluntary organisations, other councils, other organisations who specialise in the field and, most importantly, service users.
When the commission feels that they have gathered sufficient evidence they will put together a report of their findings and make recommendations for improvements in the area they have investigated. This report will be considered by the Executive together with an action plan prepared by the relevant department detailing how recommendations of the commission will be implemented.
Commissions are a very useful part of the scrutiny process allowing for in depth investigation of a particular issue and allowing improvements to be identified and, ultimately, real changes to be made in the way that services are run.
If there is an issue, policy or service area which you believe needs reviewing in this way, you may want to bring this to the attention of the Scrutiny team.
Current and recent scrutiny commissions
Details of current and recent commissions can be found below, alternatively please click on the title of the commission you are interested in:
Information on previous scrutiny commissions and their final reports can be viewed on the Past Scrutiny Commissions page.