Issue - meetings

To consider the report of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Working Group (copy enclosed).

The Committee received the report of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Working Group (the Working Group) on a Member scrutiny item request and the conclusions of the Working Group.

The Chairperson introduced the report and deferred to the Corporate Governance Project Officer to provide the detail. A pro-forma based on the Member request together with the initial Officer response was attached at Appendix A to the report. A briefing note confirming the current budgetary position in relation to the project the subject of this scrutiny request was included at Appendix B to the report.  The Working Group had simply referred this scrutiny request to the Committee for a decision without any specific recommendation.

At this point of the Meeting Councillor A S Fluker entered the Council Chamber.

The Assistant Director - Customer Services and Operations, gave Members a broad overview of the project such as the difficulties encountered in the early stages. She reassured Members that the project would be delivered in the next financial year and that it would be put through the Council’s Project Management Office (PMO) to ensure proper governance was followed.

Councillor P L Spenceley thanked the Assistant Director for providing the overview of the project's past and present status. Councillor Spenceley expressed concerns about whether the way in which this project had progressed since the initial public consultation would have been apparent had she not identified it and sought scrutiny. She added that while the PMO now has a strong governance structure in place for new projects, there were still risk factors for projects that had been approved prior to that new process being introduced. She suggested that in order to reassure Members that something similar wouldn't happen in the future, a report on the process of how projects were approved and a list of the projects and their current status should be provided. Councillor Spenceley proposed that the Committee should be reassured but an update would need to be provided to the Working Group on this particular project.

Councillor M E Thompson confirmed that she would second Councillor Spenceley’ s earlier proposition.

The Chairperson then brought Members’ attention to the PMO presentation found attached at Appendix C to the report.

The Chairperson then moved Councillor Spenceley’ s earlier proposition and added that if agreed the item should become a watching brief one, and when put to the Committee this was agreed.

RESOLVED that the Committee is reassured on this item without the need for further or specific scrutiny, and that progress on the project is the subject of a watching brief report back to the Working Group.