Rotherham failings spur call for town hall scrutiny inquiry

20 Nov 14
A parliamentary inquiry into the effectiveness of scrutiny arrangements in councils run by cabinets or mayors is needed after a number of high-profile failings, a senior MP has said.

By Richard Johnstone | 20 November 2014

A parliamentary inquiry into the effectiveness of scrutiny arrangements in councils run by cabinets or mayors is needed after a number of high-profile failings, a senior MP has said.

Clive Betts

Clive Betts, chair of the communities and local government select committee, told Public Finance a wide-ranging examination is necessary after the committee published its report into Rotherham Borough Council’s failure to tackle child sexual exploitation.

The committee is to recommend that its successor in the next parliament investigates the effectiveness of current scrutiny models, he said.

Its report on Rotherham found that challenge of the cabinet by the council was not effective, meaning policies were ‘divorced from reality’.

Such problems are likely to be found in other local authorities and in other service areas, Betts warned. An investigation into how scrutiny in cabinet and mayoral governance works is now vital, he added.

‘It was interesting to read the Tower Hamlets report [into governance in the authority led by mayor Lutfur Rahman] where scrutiny was singled out as a problem where they hadn’t done their job in scrutinising issues around finance,’ he said.

‘We didn’t generalise and say how scrutiny should be improved in Rotherham and in general, but we recognise that it is such an important function in councils – now that they’ve moved over to cabinet and mayoral systems – that we need a full select committee report into this.’

Betts said he was ‘laying down a marker’ for the committee’s successor after the election next May. ‘The issue is where there is strong cabinet government or strong leadership, sometimes where things are going wrong there’s either a failure to recognise or a desire to close the issue down and not get public attention to them.

'But scrutiny has to therefore open them up and examine them. If it doesn’t, things go wrong.’

Jessica Crowe, the executive director of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, said a national evaluation of council scrutiny is needed. ‘There hasn’t really been an evaluation since very shortly after the changes in the Local Government Act 2000 [which spread cabinet and mayoral local governance in England],’ she said.

‘We have seen support for scrutiny functions down to its lowest level since 2004 and there is an average of less than two officers per authority for scrutiny. It is under strain and we need to understand that and understand where the problems are, which in some places are leading to the kinds of failures we saw in Rotherham.’


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