Members of the council’s new Labour cabinet are due to set out their strategic priorities at another “scrutiny committee” meeting next week.
Brighton and Hove City Council has created two overview and scrutiny committees to run alongside its new decision-making cabinet which has replaced the previous system of policy-making committees.
The second scrutiny meeting to be scheduled is the council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee next Tuesday (23 July).
The meeting follows the first meeting of the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday 9 July.
The council has also retained its existing Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
But the agenda for the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee contains just one report, setting out its terms of reference.
The only other item of substantive business is headed “Presentations by cabinet members” and is followed by a line saying: “Cabinet members to present on their strategic priorities (verbal).”
This is despite a legal requirement in the Local Government Act for reports to council and committee meetings to be published in advance other than in exceptional circumstances.
At the People Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting last week, cabinet members spent more than two hours giving presentations and answering questions from councillors.
The Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which is due to meet four times a year, is made up of 10 councillors – seven of them Labour – as well as three co-opted members.
The two new scrutiny committees are expected to be “internally focused” on services provided by the council while the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee focuses on other organisations, predominantly NHS trusts.
The Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee is expected to cover
- housing delivery
- finance and procurement
- culture and leisure services
- transport and highways
- planning policy, conservation and design
- waste management and control
- economic development and regeneration
- environmental awareness, enforcement and sustainability
- safer communities, emergency planning, licensing policy, environmental health and trading standards
- corporate services, human resources, information technology and any other services that do not come under the terms of reference for any other committee
The Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 4pm next Tuesday (23 July). The meeting is scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
A “scrutiny” meeting where Labour councillors get to mark their Labour councillor colleagues’ homework. This whole cabinet system stinks.
I think perhaps you are misunderstanding what a Scrutiny Committee does. It isn’t about ‘marking homework’ as you suggest. This is from the guide for Scrutiny Committees for the Local Government Association guide:
The scrutiny committee gathers evidence on issues affecting local people and makes recommendations based on its findings. Scrutiny can investigate any issue which affects the local area or the area’s inhabitant
I do understand what a scrutiny committee is. Cramming all of the council’s business that comes under the remit of “place” into one scrutiny committee means that a lot of decisions could potentially be made behind closed doors because there will not be agenda space for proper meaningful public scrutiny or debate.
Perhaps you didn’t see the (hastily deleted) tweet from Labour councillor Joy Robertson last month when she gloated about opposition councillors in Brighton and Hove having “no voice”, and in a twitter thread with journalist Jo Wadsworth, Joy seemed to imply that decisions are discussed by the Labour Group at closed door meetings they have ahead of meetings. In that deleted tweet, when Jo asked about Labour backbenchers influence, Joy responded that “That is incorrect Jo, our decisions are discussed at Labour Group”. The whole thread implied that Labour councillors discuss Cabinet decisions at their Labour Group meetings, which explained why press releases about decision made at Cabinet meetings were issued by Labour councillors whilst the Cabinet meetings were still underway.
The scrutiny committee is chaired by a Labour councillor, the deputy chair is a Labour councillor and the majority of people on the scrutiny committee are Labour councillors. It doesn’t really leave much genuine room for alternative scrutiny, including public scrutiny. That’s what I meant by marking their own homework.
Speaking of scrutiny, I’d be keen to see how public, or at least recognised advocates, are able to feed into the council in a structured way.
Blairite power grab
You say this a lot, but don’t actually substantiate yourself. Put some meat on those bones!