[Dushana Pinfield]

Providing the most comprehensive picture of overview and scrutiny in English and Welsh local government. Find out how overview and scrutiny has developed, how effective it has been and how scrutineers think the recent policy developments will impact the future of scrutiny.
Read the results here.

[Gennie Holmes]

I completed this questionnaire for our team, but reading the report I wonder whether any consideration might be made for polictical balance within an authority? We have a very large majority with our ruling group, which means that our scrutiny boards are chaired by and made up of mainly ruling group Members. This has an affect in that our scrutiny works best pre-decision as there is unlikely to be any major disagreement or challenge post-decision from Scrutiny Boards. Also this reduces the likelihood of call-ins as well.

[Ed Hammond]

Hi Gemma, it's an interesting point and we can of course go into the data to examine this in more detail.

Generally speaking we find that large majorities can have different effects - it depends on the political dynamic of the leading group. Some have two or three "factions" which can still lead to some dynamic work being played out through scrutiny - others are heavily whipped and opportunities for dissent far more limited. There's no definitive picture of what it means, just as there is no direct correlation between (say) which party leads and how effective scrutiny is.