Tag Archives: Scrutiny

Scrutiny, who cares?

20 Oct

As I wrote earlier in the week, the conduct of the overview and scrutiny function at Newham council has been severely criticised in a report from the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny.

But what is overview and scrutiny, and why is it important?

The role that overview and scrutiny can play in holding an authority’s decision-makers to account makes it fundamentally important to the successful functioning of local democracy. Effective scrutiny helps secure the efficient delivery of public services and drives improvements within the authority itself. Conversely, poor scrutiny can be indicative of wider governance, leadership and service failure.

That’s from the ministerial foreword to 2019’s “Statutory Guidance on Overview and Scrutiny in Local and Combined Authorities” written by then-minister for local government Rishi Sunak MP. I wonder whatever happened to him?

Overview and scrutiny committees have been part of the local government landscape since 2000 and are mandatory for local authorities with executive governance arrangements, which means councils with a leader and cabinet or  a directly-elected mayor. Councils run on the committee system don’t require O&S, but can opt for it if they want.

The idea is that councillors who are not part of the executive can hold the executive to account for the decisions and actions that affect their communities.

When overview and scrutiny works well it should provide constructive ‘critical friend’ challenge; amplify the voices and concerns of the public; be led by independent people who take responsibility for their role; and drive improvement in public services.

Given that directly-elected mayors hold so much power and unlike leaders in the other governance models can’t be removed, effective scrutiny by councillors provides vital checks and balances. As the guidance puts it

A strong organisational culture that supports scrutiny work is particularly important in authorities with a directly-elected mayor to ensure there are the checks and balances to maintain a robust democratic system. Mayoral systems offer the opportunity for greater public accountability and stronger governance, but there have also been incidents that highlight the importance of creating and maintaining a culture that puts scrutiny at the heart of its operations.

Authorities with a directly-elected mayor should ensure that scrutiny committees are well-resourced, are able to recruit high-calibre members.

The failure of overview and scrutiny in Newham is nothing new. It was appalling under the previous mayor, who regarded the whole thing with contempt. That things have not improved since 2018 is more than disappointing. But, as the statutory guidance says, the

prevailing organisational culture, behaviours and attitudes of an authority will largely determine whether its scrutiny function succeeds or fails.

Anyone who has paid any attention to local politics in Newham, which until last year meant the internal politics of the local Labour party, will recognise the truth of that. 

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Scrutiny scrutinised

18 Oct

Cllr Anthony McAlmont, chair of Overview and Scrutiny

Cllr Anthony McAlmont has chaired overview and scrutiny since 2014

Buried in the papers for Monday’s full council meeting was a report entitled ‘Scrutiny Improvement Review’. It is the output of work carried out by something called the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny.

I must admit I wasn’t aware of this review and completely missed an earlier interim report, produced back in 2022. Given that the CfGS were

unable to speak to the Chair of O&S, the Mayor or mayoral support officers and Cabinet members or CLT

during the first phase of work I doubt it contained anything of value. But happily, they were invited back to complete their review and the final report is damning.

Here is the summary of findings:

Some recent improvements in minor aspects of scrutiny’s operation cannot detract from the fact that the function is not performing as it should. The core of the challenge lies in poor relationships – principally, poor relationships between Members, but also poor member-officer relationships. Without sustained effort to improve relationships it will not be possible to achieve any tangible improvements.

Trying to improve relationships will be difficult while ongoing behavioural problems continue. There is real personal animosity between certain councillors, and between certain councillors and the Mayor.

It is right that the Mayor should be subject to robust scrutiny, but for this scrutiny to work at all well requires a degree of good faith on all sides. It does not serve anyone, least of all Newham’s residents, for scrutiny to be used as a way to act out personal disagreements and factional Party disputes. There is an unusual, and unhelpful, focus on the need to hold the Mayor to account exclusively, rather than the Mayor, her Cabinet, and senior officers individually and collectively.

It is unsurprising that senior officers do not want to enter the political space, but they are going to have to, as these problems left unaddressed will come to have real-world impacts on the ability of the authority to do business, if this is not already happening. As things stand this general absence of officers from a role of active management within the political space is exacerbated by the unusually high number of interim staff in senior positions.

Member-member relationship challenges influence and inform member-officer relationships as well. They have prompted two undesirable trends:

▪ An extremely variability in the quality of certain relationships. In respect of certain committees, individuals, and topics under scrutiny, member- member and member-officer relationships are quite positive. In other spaces, the opposite is the case. This variability occludes systemic weakness and means that it has been difficult for the organisation to find consensus about the nature of the problem.

▪ A tendency towards defensiveness – from most if not all key stakeholders – about their role in scrutiny, its work, the quality of corporate governance generally and the state of the Council’s political and organisational culture. We have found that in areas where weakness is admitted it, and its impacts, can be minimised – or the fault for that weakness is placed at the door of another individual or group.

It is everyone’s responsibility to work together to admit that these problems exist, that everyone bears some responsibility for their presence, and to try, despite disagreements, to put improvements in place. This will be challenging. While improvement is possible it will require meaningful reflection and self-criticism from everyone in the system.

The report is only 12 pages long and is worth reading in full.

Long-term readers of this blog will know that ineffective scrutiny is nothing new. Indeed, under the previous mayor it was designed not to work. Things have clearly not improved and it is fair to ask why not. There is more than enough blame to go around, but one person in particular should now be considering their position. 

Cllr Anthony McAlmont has been chair of Overview and Scrutiny since 2014. He has held the role under both Robin Wales and Rokhsana Fiaz. If, as the report says, “there is not a clearly articulated role for scrutiny to perform” what has he been doing for the past 10 years?

The resignation – or, if he won’t do that, his ousting by Labour Group colleagues – won’t fix scrutiny. That’s a long term programme, the first steps towards which are recommended in the report. But it would show that at long last someone is being held accountable for their failings. 

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The Tudor Court of Sir Robin

19 May

Guest post by Ken Taylor

I have just listened to a recording of Monday night’s Newham Labour Group meeting. This was the biannual meeting where standing order rule amendments and reports by Group officers are considered and, most importantly, elections by Labour councillors of group officers for the next 2 years.  

A long-serving retired Newham Councillor, in his autobiography, described the Council under the control of Sir Robin Wales, as resembling a 16th century Tudor Court. Last night’s Labour Group AGM certainly did nothing to counter that impression. 

Tammany Hall Politics

Firstly, there was a series of biased and clearly manipulated elections. Labour Party rules quite rightly state that the chair of a Labour Group cannot be a member of the Council cabinet. Group officers are supposed to be a brake on the power of the Executive, part of the necessary check and balances. In Newham there is no significant difference between Cabinet members and Executive advisors – some cabinet members are part-time, while some advisors are ‘full-time’ and receive substantially higher allowances. The current chair, Clive Furness, is paid £34,000 on top of his £10900 councillor earnings by the mayor as his advisor on Adults & Health. Obviously, he has to support the wishes of the mayor or he will be sacked. A majority of councillors are either on the Mayor’s pay roll, or want to be. It was little surprise that Cllr Furness was re-elected, although 23 out of 56 (41%) of Councillors voted for his opponent, John Gray, via secret ballot.  Always remember that Newham residents, who are some of the poorest in the country, pay for the Mayor’s financial favours for his supporters through their Council tax; it does not come out of Sir Robin’s own pocket.  

While it was good news that two independent-minded councillors were elected to chair individual Scrutiny commissions, it was not surprising that a former Mayoral advisor was elected as the chair of Overview and Scrutiny by the votes of other paid Mayor advisors. So the councillors who the Mayor decides to pay huge amounts of money to be his advisors decide who should scrutinise them? This is no-one’s idea of accountability.

Safely re-installed as chair, Clive Furness then went on to wreck a motion calling for paid Mayoral advisors not to be allowed to vote in future elections for his position by only allowing 2 speakers on the motion. He then insisted only the Mayor should have the final word and refused the proposer of the motion the right of reply to the Mayor’s venom. The Chair obviously earned his money that night. Well done!  

Bragfest

In his AGM report the Mayor went on his usual ego trip, bragging that Newham was so far ahead of all other Labour councils in the land, who he thinks are all useless, incompetent and badly led. Such a contrast to Newham under his leadership!

He attacked the motion on preventing his paid advisors controlling Labour group officers by claiming it was undemocratic and wrong for anyone to restrict the choice of who to vote for. It would lead to the destruction of the Party and the end of all civilised life as we know it. This is despite national Labour Party rules which restrict who can be cabinet members and vote in Scrutiny elections. He also seems to have forgotten that he agreed last year to a convention that East Ham Labour Party would exclude all councillors from being branch officers.  

What would be laughable, if it was not so serious, was Sir Robins boast to Group that he had introduced secret ballots for Group elections! This is of course a blatant untruth. You have to wonder why he makes such preposterous claims. Why the constant need to feed his ego? Who knows.

Trigger Ballot

In the next 12 months or so there must be a “trigger ballot” of Labour Party members and affiliates in Newham on whether the current Mayor is automatically the Labour candidate for Mayor in 2018. If you think that, regardless of the many talents (and faces) of Sir Robin Wales, after more than 20 years of his rule we need a choice in Newham, then you will vote for an open and transparent election process. It may turn out that Sir Robin is the best candidate, but members should surely take the chance to consider alternatives. I hope members will vote to give themselves a real choice.

OMG. I have been invited as a guest to the formal Newham Council AGM tonight (Thursday). The mayor promised at the Group meeting that there will be even more bragging about himself. I must bring earplugs – and a large hip flask.

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Visions of scrutiny

13 May

Next week sees the annual general meeting of Newham council’s Labour group. This is where elections for political positions takes place. It is also where the chair of overview and scrutiny is chosen, as the position is meant to be independent of the executive.

This year three candidates have put themselves forward: Anthony McAlmont (Royal Docks), Neil Wilson (Plaistow South) and Conor McAuley (Custom House). Between them there are sharply contrasting views as to the role of scrutiny and its relationship with the executive.

Anthony McAlmont is the incumbent and one of Sir Robin’s most reliable toadies. His election statement reads like it could have been written in the Mayor’s office – and it quite possibly was.

I am the incumbent chair of OSC. I held together and led the scrutiny chairs and the commissions in the face of what sometimes seems like an extension of group; so very often, this put at risk scrutiny’s ability to: effectively work with the Executive in terms of policy development; carry out more in-depth scrutiny inquiries into policy outcomes and resident engagement.

I inherited an OSC that was not fit for purpose in that the current scrutiny model is unable to adapt or respond adequately or address any emerging priorities and any additional pressures arising in year. I believe that we need a scrutiny model that is able to engage and support a wider range of scrutiny activities in areas such as commissioning arrangements, external partnering arrangements, transformational and income generating initiatives (Council Small Business Programme – CSBP and Red Doors) through more in-depth scrutiny inquiries.  

To address the above issues OSC adopted new protocol arrangements to enhance the effective working of the scrutiny process; however, I now believe that this is not enough. The new protocols must now be accompanied by a new scrutiny model. 

I do not believe that Newham’s scrutiny must be adversarial, but rather adopt a constructive partnership working which allows it to contribute to the effective running of the Council in the interest of residents, thus making Newham a place people want to work, live and stay. To this end I shall be working with the mayor, fellow members, officers and partners to scrutinise and develop recommendations which will support Executive members to transform and develop policies on budgeting and service delivery thereby ensuring that services are effective, transformational and value for money. 

That Cllr McAlmont claims the new protocol was adopted, rather than imposed by the mayor, shows how far up Sir Robin’s backside he is. Under his watch the scrutiny function has been a joke – as those of us who witnessed the ‘inquiry’ into the East Ham Campus overspend and the ultra vires opening of Newham Sixth Form Collegiate will testify. If he is re-elected the mayor will continue, confident that nothing as bothersome as scrutiny will get in his way.

Neil Wilson isn’t exactly threatening to rock the boat either.

In this post I would wish to make a clear priority the in-year performance and financial monitoring that is so crucial to ensure both value-for money and quality assurance from the realignment of budgets/services. I would encourage the more frequent use of “task-and-finish” groups to ensure that there is constructive feedback to proposals from the Executive in areas such as the Small Business Programme, the devolution of service provision to the Neighbourhoods.

Scrutiny work which aims to develop and review policy tends to constitute the bulk of work considered to be the most effective, and so I would always seek to be collaborative, working with the Mayor and Executive, and of course, the other Scrutiny Chairs.

Conor McAuley, by contrast, is up for a fight. After 34 years on the council and with his front bench career firmly behind him, he has no need to tolerate the leadership’s bullshit. 

Newham is unique as a local Council in that we, the Labour Party, hold all 60 Council seats and the Mayoralty. This places a special responsibility on us to be open in our dealings with the community we serve and in particular, open to scrutiny.

In the two years since the last election we have failed to live up to this.

In February 2015 Overview & Scrutiny started its enquiry into issues around the £11Million + overspend on the East Ham Campus. A year or more later, we still await the conclusions and sight of the report.

Many attribute this delay to the “Mayor’s Scrutiny Protocol” which he initially imposed upon the Group in July 2014. This protocol has since been assimilated into the Council’s Constitution. It now requires all scrutiny requests and questions to be routed through the Mayor’s office giving three weeks’ notice of questions and invitations to already scheduled meetings. This has been a recipe for delay.

It is bizarre that the political leader of the Council and his Executive determine when, how and even if, they will be scrutinised.

Throughout these two years I have been a member of the Regeneration & Employment Scrutiny Commission. This has not been an onerous task because the last Regeneration & Employment Scrutiny Commission meeting was held on February 11th 2015 with the Vice Chair in the Chair.

An entire municipal year has now passed without another meeting and a colleague has been paid an allowance to chair this commission. This is indefensible!

I want to re-invigorate Scrutiny in Newham and I would start with a revision of the Council’s scrutiny protocols.

Well good luck with that, councillor!

As I have said at almost tedious length in the past, scrutiny is a vital function of the council. Under a directly-elected mayoralty it is the only way that Sir Robin and his well-remunerated chums in the executive can be held to account. If councillors aren’t prepared to engage in the process properly there is almost no point at all to them being there. 

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More cuts, less scrutiny

23 Nov

Three Wise Monkeys 2010

The mayor’s vision for scrutiny in Newham

Every cloud has a silver lining and Sir Robin Wales has found a very shiny benefit to the £50 million of cuts he has to implement: the excuse to slash funding for Scrutiny.

The seven scrutiny committees, which cover all aspects of the council’s activities, from health to crime & disorder, are now supported by a single officer.

As a consequence, the number of scrutiny meetings has been severely curtailed. Some committees, including the Health and Social Care Scrutiny Commission, haven’t held a public hearing since June. This is despite the many pressing health issues facing the borough, fundamental changes in the funding and delivery of Adult Social Care and serious concerns over the quality of services delivered by our local hospitals.

Councillors who actually want to do the only real job they were elected for – scrutinising the executive and holding the mayor to pubic account for his decisions – are becoming increasingly frustrated. The lack of support means things that members want to look at have to be ‘prioritised’ as part of an overall ‘work programme’- a mysterious process that is managed by the chair of overview & scrutiny, Tony McAlmont. As Cllr McAlmont owes his position and the significant ‘special responsibility allowance’ that goes along with it to the mayor, his view of ‘priorities’ may not be entirely independent.

Even when work gets ‘prioritised’ it has become nigh on impossible for committee chairs to schedule public meetings. The mayor’s new, legally dubious ‘scrutiny protocol’ (which councillors obediently nodded through in September) requires all requests for witnesses to be made via the mayor’s office, with at least 15 working days notice. The mayor then gets to decide if the requested council officer or Executive member will attend or provide only written answers. Witnesses can suddenly become ‘unavailable’ at very short notice, or substituted with someone of the mayor’s own choosing, rendering the hearing pointless.

One scrutiny commission chair has written to the council’s chief executive and Cllr McAlmont to express their concern:

We are all trying very hard in scrutiny to work within the new regime, forced upon us by government cuts, but I feel that we are being blocked at every turn. When scrutiny of the council’s business is now more important than ever, our capacity to do our work is very constrained through lack of resources.

I must urge you to […] do everything in your power to support scrutiny before we lose all but the statutory minimum of functions.

Nothing will come it. Sir Robin hates scrutiny and holds the entire process in contempt. 

At last week’s Cabinet he threw his toys out of the pram when a scrutiny report suggested his pet ‘Every Child A Musician’ programme might have some issues with variable quality in delivery. He blasted the committee for the ‘markedly lower quality’ of their research (compared to well-funded, full-time professional academic researchers he had previously paid for!) and rejected out of hand a recommendation that the aims, objectives and expected outcomes of the programme be reviewed, saying this would be a waste of money.

If Kim Bromley-Derry and Tony McAlmont want to keep their jobs they’ll say nothing – and do even less. For the mayor, defunding scrutiny is a dream come true.

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