[David Collins]

We have tried lots of innovative approaches over the years Dave - see examples at www.newport.gov.uk/scrutiny.

I have sent you a copy of our latest one too.

(Are you going to the 2 day event in Llandod next week?)

[Gary Marson]

I certainly don't have a definitive answer either Dave, but we looked at the same question here recently and came to the conclusion that presentation might triumph over content. We previously produced extremely dull looking documents in standard Committee report format but this year tried very hard to radically improve the look and feel - or rather, we passed it to our in house design team to do so with a brief to keep it light and uncluttered.

We also tried to take the opportunity to slip in some informative and educative peices aimed very much at the Member readership and keep the language as plain as possible. The final result can be found here;

http://www.lbhf.gov.uk/Directory/Council...rutiny.asp

In order to avoid criticism over cost we didn't print any hard copies, relying purely on the pdf document.

[Ed Hammond]

Lots of photos of councillors doing things always goes down a treat.

Also, an element of humility to make the AR genuinely useful. Lots of them read like PR - warm words about how great scrutiny is but hence nothing of real use. The AR should be used as an improvement tool - an opportunity to look back and the last year's work, to highlight what went well but also to highlight what might, perhaps, not have worked - and to suggest ways in which you're going to improve next year.

Obviously this might be politically difficult in some authorities, but I do think that honesty about shortcomings and a commitment to improve demonstrates the kind of self-awareness that is all so often absent in local government.

Also - cut out the stats (number of meetings, number of things considered, blah blah).

[Earl Piggott-Smith]

hi, i have two ideas that you might want to try

1. title the report - what has scrutiny ever done for us? this will provide a challenge for officers, members and represenatative of outside organisations to list examples of hopefully good scrutiny but also areas where improvements need to be made to achieve better scrutiny.
2. the other option could be or to organise the the work done during the year under the headings - what has worked well, what didnt work well and what will you do differently next year.
   

[Elizabeth Power]

For the last two years we have a new format and called it "Scrutiny in Gloucestershire - making a difference". Our in-house design team helped with the design so the AR fits the corporate image. We included a foreword from the chairman of the scrutiny management committee, the vision for scrutiny of the chief executive and scrutiny lead chief officer, and some background to scrutiny and its purpose. Each committee has a double page detailing its work (key achievements) over the last year, and what's coming up in the next few months. This year we gave a page to each task group too. We put thumbnails of the chair and vice-chair on each committee and task group page, and other photos used throughout were mostly local images and relevant to the committee.

Our AR has been a really useful document. We've used it as an induction tool for new councillors and officers, and given copies out at every opportunity internally and externally to promote scrutiny. For that reason it was worth making it look different from regular committee reports.

ARs from 2006-09 can be found at the bottom of this page: http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/index....cleid=4701

[David Collins]

In years gone by we have written chapters about each of the CFPS Principles and how succesful (or not) we had been in implementing them.

We have also done Case Studies - one per principle.

The issue of titles (above) is an interesting one. I wanted to call our second AR "Now thats what I call Scrutiny 2." But....

[Lauren Rushen]

Our Chairs recently asked us to look into revamping our annual report so we gave it a complete overhaul, trying to focus on what the public would be interested to read and how to make it eye catching. We decided to focus on four key questions for each of our reviews:
1) Why was this review undertaken?
2) What did they [the panel] find out?
3) How did the panel do this?
4) Who's benefited from the results?
We tried to keep it simple and stick to the key points, 2 pages maximum per review. We ditched a lot of the stats in favour of more relevant text and an appealing read. It's been well received and we've had lots of positive feedback. We don't currently have the latest report on our website but I can e-mail you a pdf version if you'd like to see it?

[Jack Latkovic]

Some excellent ideas and examples here - I'm assuming they have all been uploaded into the CfPS review library...

The branding of scrutiny and the subsequent sub-branding of individual committees represents a number of opportunities. Scrutiny can appear to be more independent through effective branding and the sub-branding of committees (each adopting a colour for example) can help committees to appear, and feel more autonomous. However, applied to Annual Reports alone the effect can lead to a confusing imbalance with other scrutiny resources. Having a impressive and readable AR hosted within a clumsy and ill frequented scrutiny webpage wont add that much value. The branding in the report could be repeated on the webpage and in other scrutiny documents.

In house design teams are clearly capable of turning out excellent ARs as evidenced by the reports referenced above. However, there is a danger that the end product could look indistinguishable from other council documents repelling the public just as effectively.

I was hoping to end with another album title pun but its not happening ...