[Dave Mckenna]

Nick Beale Wrote:

Dave Mckenna Wrote:It is surprisingly challenging to fill out these sections and even more challenging to convince colleagues to drop phrases like 'commissioning process' and 'appropriate vehicle'. It may be that this is a cultural challenge that is just a little to big for us!

The next cultural step is to drop "challenging" and say "hard"!

I just don't think of you guys as the public ;-)

Otherwise instead of 'cultural' I would have said... ermmmm. ermmmm

[Ed Hammond]

It's very easy to get caught in the trap of using complicated language in reports.

While usually it isn't necessary, we obviously have to remember that in some circumstances professional or technical language does exist to provide a shorthand for concepts which it would be long-winded to explain in practice. It's those issues that we really need to address, arguably more than the use of terminology like "challenging".

This was brought home to me by the LGA's list of "banned words" - the "plain English" definitions for many of them may have been plain English but they were also plain wrong.

[Alastair Higton]

Try the link below for one I worked on during my time at Taunton Deane. It's representative of the style that we adopted for all our task and finish reports- recommendations were accepted by the Executive, the chair of the review was a councillor who had only been elected a year earlier (and a very good job she did too) it was made available publicly, passed to the press and although I don't know if anyone outside the council ever read it (!) I reckon it's a pretty good example. Even if I do say so myself.

www1.tauntondeane.gov.uk/tdbcsites/tdbcagendas/RtnPDF.aspx

The only downside is that now Taunton Deane have changed their website, there are no dedicated scrutiny pages so I had to trawl panel agendas to find the link. I have several more on disk so email me seperately if you'd like copies.

Cheers

Alastair

[Paul Dean]

Reading this thread and from personal experience I now conclude that the answer is that we should only publish short, concise summary versions of any scrutiny review. Thinking about who 99% of the target audience are, then that's all that is required. Anyone else can ask for the background information pack of evidence papers if they want it.

New, innovative or interesting ideas and evidence which emerge from a scrutiny review, even from long ones lasting several months, can always be summarised in just a handful of pages maximum. Yet some reviews read like PhD theses, stunning readers into silent submission. This is bad on so many levels despite that fact that such reports are undoubtedly 'comprehensive'.

One mammoth 80+ page example I saw was so comprehensive that it included a description of the inclement weather experienced by Members during a site visit. Now, what is that all about? Was the author imagining that readers' lives are so lacking in incident that that information is of interest or relevance?

Short reports get read more and, yes, they do generate more demands for further information and provoke more follow up discussion with scrutiny. But this is a very good thing because it helps us understand better who is reading them and what they are being used for. Engaging in this dialogue surely is time better spent than writing mega volumes, 99% of which are of no interest to anyone other than those who took part.