Agenda item

a) Cost of meetings during 2010/11

b) Effectiveness of EKJSC

TO DISCUSS

(1) An estimate of the costs of administering the East Kent (Joint Scrutiny) Committee during 2010/11 was circulated to all Councillors at the start of the meeting. The costs of the three meetings that were held in this period, comprising the cost of producing and posting the agenda papers and the cost of refreshments, amounted to just over £500 (Dover District Council did not charge for use of the Council Chamber for these meetings). Several Councillors commented that this cost was reasonable.

(2) The Chairman sought to stimulate the debate by asking what the value of EKJSC was, given the fact that scrutiny took place at the local level in the form of each council’s scrutiny committee, and whether the Committee should continue in its current guise. He also referred to a comment made at Canterbury City Council, which suggested that there should be a meeting of the executives, scrutiny committees and officers of the East Kent councils once or twice per year.

(3) Several Councillors expressed a view that the EKJSC was a valuable forum, but lacked the power to be effective. A comment was made that in the future there would be more joint working, including scrutiny, and it was easier and more cost effective to give a report to one meeting instead of all the constituent councils. However, it was felt that the Committee lacked the necessary statutory powers and that there had been a lack of officers at the meetings due to the fact that the Committee could not insist on officers attending.

(4) A view was shared by several Councillors that an advantage of the Committee was that it was an opportunity to meet with Councillors from other councils and gain different perspectives. However, it was also felt that the EKJSC was not able to scrutinise decisions to the same level of detail as was possible in individual councils, and a Councillor suggested that the work of the Committee may contradict local scrutiny. A suggestion was made that local scrutiny committees could cede scrutiny powers to the EKJSC, but there was concern that this might not be legally possible.

(5) It was suggested that there would be value in the EKJSC having a dialogue with scrutiny committees in the individual councils, and the Chairman offered to convene a meeting between each of the chairs, Ms Reed and Mr Ryan to discuss a protocol for the attendance of relevant officers and to coordinate the frequency of the various scrutiny meetings.

(6) Mr Wickenden stated that he had recently attended a Local Government Information Unit seminar, where the EKJSC had been highlighted as an example of the vanguard in partnership working. The Chairman felt that the Committee did have a future and a role to play, and several Councillors agreed with this view, with the proviso that reports needed to be of a higher quality, relevant and substantial with the appropriate officers present.

(7) RESOLVED: that the East Kent Joint Scrutiny Committee:

a) Note the costs of the Committee during 2010/11

b) Note the value and forward-looking nature of the Committee and its increasing role as partnership-working develops, while recognising that the issues of officer attendance, quality of reports and the Committees’ powers will need to be addressed in the future.

c)  Request that a report be brought to the next meeting of the Committee, to include a review of the Terms of Reference, and that a discussion take place at that meeting about how the Committee should function in the future.