[Harriet O'Hara]

I have recently returned to Scrutiny after a long break and was wondering if any research has been done evaluating the first ten years or so of the scrutiny function in local government.

[Peter Marrington]

Hi, Ed Hammond is probably your man for this, but off the top of my head there is the earlier reveiw done by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, titled 'the Development of OSC in Local Government'. This was published in 2002/3. Then more lately there is Scrutiny: Theory and Practice in Local Government, edited by Andrew Coulson. This was published in 2010 and along the way there is the CfPs document 'Practice, progress and potential' an asssessment. This was published I think around 2005. Again Ed should be able to expand. Hope this helps.

[Harriet O'Hara]

Thanks, Peter. Sorry for the delay in my response, but I am not in till the back end of the week.

[tim gilling]

We have just published 'Joining the Dots' - an analysis of our annual local government scrutiny surveys from 2004 to 2010. This gives a comprehensive picture about the way scrutiny has developed.

http://www.cfps.org.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=882

[Ed Hammond]

There was also a review in 2004 carried out by the Constitution Unit. The author was Lucinda Maer who now works in the House of Commons Library.

I wouldn't necessary rely too much on the pre-2005 documents - they all reflect a scrutiny function finding its feet, and practice and impact has consolidated significantly since then. Andrew Coulson's research is probably the only recent stuff apart of course from our recent research mentioned by Tim.

In theory I would not necessarily be averse to another bells-and-whistles analysis of the function but in practice I think we're better off with the smaller, more targeted bits of research on successful scrutiny, supplemented by the survey, which between them provide a relatively accurate picture.

We put together a project proposal for funding from the Leverhulme Trust in 2010 that would have funded a "first ten years of scrutiny" project but unfortunately the decision was made not to fund it. It's a shame but as a piece of work it would need to be pretty comprehensive to be credible and we don't really have the resources to do something like that on existing funding.

[mrsunnywilliam]

All these scrutinies are getting in my head. I have read a lot of blogs and was still stressed with it. By the way, I'm just new here and will be glad to get all the help I can. Will share some thoughts after I finalized one.

Visit Orange County Plumbing to
learn more about my interests.