Scrutiny and Improving Brent Council

I have covered two of the purposes suggested for Scrutiny in a previous post.  I thought I would now do the third: improving Brent's own services. 

At my last meeting of the One Council Scrutiny meeting, it was admitted by the senior officer that performance measures for the Council were laid out in a very unhelpful way.  Incidentally, no mention was made of an intention to abolish that committee and we in fact agreed that a number of items would come to the next meeting.  They won't now of course, as Full Council abolished it.  Whether this is a sign of extreme secrecy in decision making, or that the whole thing is being dreamt up in a completely back-of-the-envelope manner, I remain unsure.

As I see it, the main usefulness of councillor scrutiny would be in setting broad political principles rather than carrying out detailed scrutiny of management.  I am not sure that councillors really have the capacity to improve the day to day management of the Council.  However, I can see that there is scope for ongoing problems such as the excessive number of interim staff employed by the Councillors, which may well mask deeper problems.