Issue - meetings

To advise the Committee and Council on new arrangements to allow individual members to pursue particular problems affecting their ward via Overview and Scrutiny Committees, where other methods of resolution have been exhausted.

The Committee considered a report outlining new arrangements to allow individual Members to pursue particular problems affecting their wards via overview and scrutiny committees, where other methods of resolution had been exhausted. This way of empowering ward Members was known as “Councillor Call for Action” (CCfA). 

The report set out the principles governing CCfA, indicating the benefits but also emphasising where such an approach would be inappropriate.

Some of the authorities piloting the scheme had adopted a checklist which assisted individual ward Members in resolving issues before it became necessary to involve an overview and scrutiny committee. Such checklists also provided a framework for the authority to manage CCfA and ensured that overview and scrutiny could add value. A suggested checklist for Cheshire East Council was set out in paragraph 11 of the report.

The views of the Corporate Scrutiny Committee were also being sought.

Members felt that overview and scrutiny involvement should be a last resort and that Members should receive the necessary training, information and support to fulfil their roles under CCfA. Members also stressed the need to ensure that the process did not distract the Council from addressing the ‘greater needs and priorities’ within Cheshire East as a whole.

RESOLVED

That subject to the views of the Corporate Scrutiny Committee

(1)   the proposed arrangements for dealing with requests for overview and scrutiny committees to consider matters raised under the Community Call for Action as set out in the report be adopted;

(2)   the Borough Solicitor be requested to draw up a suitable checklist, based on the issues listed in paragraph 11 of the report, to assist Members with requests for Community Call for Action;

(3)   appropriate information and advice be prepared for circulation to all members, outlining the main components of Community call for action; and

(4)   appropriate Member training and awareness sessions be arranged.