[Ed Hammond]

You have until 20 April to respond to the 2011/12 Annual Survey of Overview and Scrutiny in Local Government.

The Annual Survey is your opportunity to share information, thoughts and views about overview and scrutiny with us, and our opportunity to get an accurate picture of how O&S happens in England and Wales, its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The Survey is the most comprehensive (indeed, the only) regular survey carried out about overview and scrutiny. Its results prove invaluable both for us, and for other practitioners.

The more people who fill in the survey, the accurate and credible it is. To encourage more people to fill it in, this year the survey can be completed in two ways.

1. Technical survey - a full survey about the function in your authority. Only one needs to be filled out for each council. Filling it in will take about 30 mins.
2. Shortened/abridged survey - focusing on perceptions about the current and future state of the function, in your authority and more generally. Those filling in the full technical survey will also fill in this section. Filling it in will take about 10 mins.

We will be trying to get a response to the full technical survey from every council in the country, and as many shortened survey responses as we can. We positively encourage multiple entries on the shortened survey from different people in the same authority - particularly members. All responses are of course anonymised and we will not use data collected for marketing or mailing list purposes, for ourselves or for others.

If you have any queries please let us know on 020 7187 7369.

The survey can be accessed via http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PGBJ78Z