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ITEM EN6(b)

SCRUTINY CO-ORDINATING GROUP-29 JULY 2003

Community Participation and Engagement in the Scrutiny Function Action Plan July 2003

Report of the Member Working Group

Councillors on the Working Group: Biddy Hudson (in the Chair), Ray Jelf, Jim Moley

Action Plan

As part of progressing the Scrutiny Development Action Plan, the Scrutiny Coordinating Group appointed three Councillors to examine the issue of community participation and engagement in Scrutiny. The group has met three times to discuss the potential avenues for developing community engagement in Scrutiny, and this action plan is the result of their deliberations. There is a strong feeling that although the Scrutiny activities themselves must be member led, they will be able to increase their impact by having better communication with local people. The Group has also devised a grid that sets out how the Scrutiny functions relate to different forms of working, and how these can be accessible to communities or individual members of the public. This grid is attached as Appendix A (download as .doc file). It has not been exhaustively completed, and Members are encouraged to think about the grid in relation to each particular Scrutiny activity they are involved in.

The Group has considered two principal strands of activity:

• How the Scrutiny function as a whole could improve its visibility and identity, both internally within the Council and within the community;
• How specific Scrutiny activities could engage the public both within specific interest groups and also the community at large.

The action plan therefore focuses on the general area of Raising the profile of Scrutiny as a whole, as well as three areas of the Scrutiny function: Holding the Executive to Account; Policy Development; and Developing the Work Programme. One further area of the Scrutiny function was considered: the development of the Policy Framework, but the Group decided that at present this was not a priority for community engagement.

1. Raising the profile of Scrutiny as a whole

The Group has noted that activities to raise the profile of Scrutiny internally and externally are already underway. The Scrutiny Conference was well attended by both Councillors and officers – the latter group including many people who had as yet not encountered the work of Scrutiny directly. The Conference confirmed that Scrutiny had the support of senior officers, including the Chief Executive Richard Shaw who spoke about the need for effective Scrutiny. The Group suggests that this success should be followed up at regular intervals. In addition, the presentations given at the Conference by Councillors from other Councils confirmed the need for Scrutiny in Oxfordshire to learn from best practice elsewhere, including Councils, the IDeA, and the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS).

The Group endorses the proposal for an Annual Scrutiny Report, as it would raise awareness of Scrutiny amongst officers, Councillors, and stakeholders if widely circulated. In addition, the Council should make better use of its own internal communication system to promote Scrutiny and inform its members and officers, for example by using ‘The Post’.

The Group was concerned that the public did not have sufficient means to access information about Scrutiny, or to address particular Scrutiny issues. The dedicated Scrutiny email address was not widely known or used as yet. The profile of Scrutiny activities is not helped by the name itself, as ‘Scrutiny’ does not have a widely understood meaning in relation to local government.

Action suggested:

• Issue Councillors with personal ‘contact cards’, which give short points of information about Scrutiny, provide the dedicated Scrutiny email address, and relevant telephone numbers.
• A Scrutiny Newsletter should be produced, perhaps quarterly, which updates people on the progress of reviews, public meetings, and the wider work of Scrutiny, as well as giving feedback on reviews that have been completed. This should be made available to stakeholders.
• Use ‘The Post’ to increase internal knowledge of Scrutiny, and include articles on Scrutiny in the Oxfordshire Magazine.
• A Councillor and a senior officer of Oxfordshire County Council should be put forward to be members of the Scrutiny Champions Network organised by the Centre for Public Scrutiny.
• The production quality of Scrutiny publications should be improved to increase the publicity they receive and enhance their status and impact.

2. Holding the Executive to Account

So far, this area of the Scrutiny function has been primarily concerned with the call-in of Executive decisions and with Reviews examining areas of policy or the implementation of decisions. Members of the Group acknowledge that several of the Scrutiny Reviews have been successful in getting the public involved, although more work needs to be done to improve information, access to meetings, and follow-up. New approaches to reviews should be encouraged, such as the one-day meeting in Didcot on ‘Lessons to be learnt from the Implementation of Didcot Milton Heights Stage II’ (DMH2). In general, better monitoring of how the public responded to issues, including complaints, should be encouraged.

Action suggested:

• Evaluate the success of the meeting on DMH2 and consider using the format of public meetings more widely. In general Councillors should be consulted on the layout of rooms for Scrutiny meetings, and the style of meetings should move away from conventional committee structures.
• When undertaking their activities, Scrutiny Committees and Review Groups should be encouraged to raise their visibility within the community by such things as undertaking or holding their meetings in locations or venues which facilitate the issues they are investigating.

3. Policy Development

The Group expects that Scrutiny Reviews will become increasingly forward looking, in terms of choosing review areas that contribute more to policy development, rather than looking over past policy decisions. This will increase the potential scope for community participation and engagement in shaping future policy directions. In order for this to be successful it is essential that members of the public are able to contribute to reviews that have a policy development focus. The key to ensuring greater community engagement with this process is timely and easy to understand information about reviews. Better use should be made of established channels of information, including the Oxfordshire Association of Local Councils, local radio, and local press. The members also thought that sections of the public were more likely to become engaged with specific reviews that were well focused and able to attract the attention of particular groups. This would facilitate more effective participation than aiming review information at the community as a whole.

Action suggested:

• Each Review should consider how community and interest groups could best be engaged at the scoping stage of a review. The scoping template should document how groups will be consulted and involved, with particular consideration given to the launch and conclusion of Reviews. The Scrutiny Review Officers should monitor how effective this is.
• Each Review should have individual publicity, such as a leaflet, which can be widely circulated to Stakeholders at the outset of the review, and which would invite their participation. A leaflet on the outcomes of the Review should also be produced after an appropriate time.

4. Developing the Work Programme

Not only is it important to secure the input of members of the community into the work of Scrutiny as it proceeds, but it is also important to get public engagement with how the work programme for the Scrutiny Committees is shaped. Members of Scrutiny Committees should raise the concerns of their community when the work programme is under review. In order to be more actively engaged, the public need to have good information about how Scrutiny works, and effective ways of influencing the direction of the work of the Committees. At present there are facilities in place for the public to contact the Committees on Scrutiny matters, but these are underused and insufficiently promoted. More work should be done to solicit views on Scrutiny work, for example through the Citizens Panel. Given the timescale, the recommendations for action made here should impact on the next review of the work programme in 2004.

Action suggested:

• In order to facilitate an input into the Policy Framework, the timeframe of contributing to plans needs to be more transparent to the Members and public, and a list of plans with scheduled dates should be easily accessible, for example on the Council website.
• Sections of the Oxfordshire Magazine should focus on the work of the Scrutiny Committees and on the proposals for the year-ahead Scrutiny work plan. This should encourage the public to make comments and pass on ideas via their Councillor or by e-mail.
• Suggestions for future reviews should be solicited through a special edition of the Scrutiny Newsletter in October 2003 that presents the work plan, and asks for comments on a specially designed feedback form. A clear explanation of how suggestions/comments are dealt with should be included, and how feedback will be given. Newspaper adverts, and other community information outlets should also be used.
• A working group should be set up to examine access to Scrutiny information on the web and intranet.
• The new Customer Service Manager in the Resources Directorate should look at how public contacts with the Council can be monitored.

5. Evaluating the effectiveness of the Action Plan

In order to make sure that we are being as active and effective as possible in securing greater community participation and engagement in the Scrutiny function, we want to do more than produce a one-off plan. The action points contained in this plan need to be carried out, followed up, and monitored. Several activities could evidence how well the Action plan has been implemented in 12 months time, including: a survey of stakeholders; a survey of a sample of officers; monitoring of scoping templates; and monitoring of responses to the dedicated Scrutiny e-mail address.

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