Devon County Council "Scrutiny Tool"

The "Scrutiny Tool" was drawn up at a training and development workshop for Members and acts as a checklist of questions whose answers can be used by an Overview/Scrutiny investigation to assess a particular activity's contribution to the goals of the Council's Strategic Plan.

Making investigations more effective

A seminar held in London on 24 October  2002 as part of the "Westminster Explained" series featured a series of speakers who had served on or dealt with Parliamentary Select Committees.

They gave differing perspectives on how to make a select committee effective and how to blunt its impact. Much of this knowledge was equally applicable to overview and scrutiny in local government.

See the full briefing note on the seminar.

The seminar illustrated some of the techniques experienced operators use to ensure that a committee does not inquire too closely into areas the witness would rather were left unexamined.

These are some ways for committees to guard against being sidetracked into areas of the witness's choosing:

• Don't move straight to public hearings, plan the investigation properly. This will entail both background reading and at least one session to agree a brief.
• Before each hearing, allow time to agree who will ask which questions.
• Don't allow yourself to be distracted from your agreed line of inquiry by the morning's headlines.
• Personal pet topics make your questioning predictable and less effective.
• A combative approach by the committee guarantees a defensive response from the witness.
• Be aware that a witness may be using the hearing to impart particular messages to the committee or to the media and that these may not always be pertinent to your intended lines of inquiry.
• Try to hold witnesses to what you want to talk about.
• Watch the reactions of the witness's associates — they may tell you if the he/she has departed from the script.
• After the witnesses have been heard, hold a session to consider a draft report and agree recommendations.
• Follow up on your recommendations — ask what has been done and if not, why not.

25 years of scrutiny

Today, in their modernised overview and scrutiny role, councillors can explore issues in detail, forming small task groups to hear evidence, visit service points and so on before presenting a set of recommendations to the Executive.

25 years ago, in their modernised performance review role, councillors could explore issues in detail, forming small panels to hear evidence, visit service points and so on before presenting a set of recommendations to the Policy Committee.

A 1978 report of a typical performance review investigation offers a chance to judge how much — and in some respects how little — things have changed.

Multimedia presentations

Two articles in Observer Business have discussed the drawbacks of multimedia presentations as a means of conveying useful information to an audience.

Read the first article and the second article here.

Information from Parliament

Parliamentary Committees and the House of Commons Research Library publish a wide variety of information on the internet with potential value for Overview/Scrutiny work in local government.

More sources of information available here.

Links to national and regional organisations

Links to national and regional organisations that publish material to assist overview and scrutiny in local government.