[Nick Beale]

Nick Beale Wrote:DCLG has posted an impact assessment of the proposals on their website:

http://www.info4local.gov.uk/documents/p...ns/1339805

Which I've now read ...

The assumptions they use are quite interesting: they say impact is hard to quantify but work with some figures from the CfPS surveys for average discretionary budget , number of reviews and number of scrutiny staff, for example.

The assessment makes several mentions of private firms being subject to scrutiny if they are involved in partnerships with a local authority. The emphasis on this is much stronger than I remember from the consultation paper.

Also, they say that as "enhanced scrutiny" (i.e. of partnerships) will be more costly, they expect there to be fewer reviews undertaken in future. For them though, review capacity is predicated on budgets, rather than elected members' time (which doesn't seem to have been factored in at all). Fewer reviews was not the line John Denham was plugging in his recent piece for The Independent though:

"Enhanced scrutiny would enable councils to take a lead role in ending bureaucracy and duplication, increasing value for money, and personalising services. It would also mean more local influence and accountability over more than £100bn of public money a year that is currently spent on local services."

And the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

Nor did I spot any assessment of the impact of obliging councils to designate a scrutiny officer, although you might expect dedicated support to increase capacity in an authority where there had not previously been an SO. Dedicated support should presumably help make the most of the time the members can devote to scrutiny.

[Adriana Stapleton]

If anyone's interested in St Edmundsbury's (extensive) response, send me an email to adriana.stapleton@stedsbc.gov.uk.

Adriana

[Sheena Jones]

Personally, I'm with the consolidation approach. All the whelter of consultations and bills etc don't really appear to have moved O&S on from the wellbeing power in the 2000 Act. When drafting our response last week I got so frustrated I wrote one sentence suggesting going back to the 1972 Local Government Act and starting again.....or is it me?! And I seem to remember that the whole premise of the 2000 Act was that we could all develop our own approaches to governance within the Execuitve structure without picky dictation from Government departments......

[Ed Hammond]

The House of Commons Library are currently putting together a briefing on David Chaytor's private member's bill (no, they haven't seen it either, but they're doing background research).

As it is expected to be based on the SLD consultation, would those of you who provided an official response to the consultation last year please send this response to me so that I can forward it on to the relevant person.

Please make clear in your e-mail whether the response was written by scrutiny councillors/officers or by the monitoring officer / someone from legal services.