Scrutiny Committee

On Wednesday afternoon I attended the first meeting of the Scrutiny Committee since the election.  Effective scrutiny of the work of the council is very important to the work of the council, it is disappointing that not all officers of the council agree with this.  I was interested in the report on SS Peter & Paul's Primary School, the report shows real improvement.

There were a couple of interesting reports from Audit Scotland.  I think that councillors (and officers) should pay attention to these.  These reports call for greater openness and the inclusion of communities in discussions about the budget process.  It is difficult to see how the secretive 'Changing for the Future' Board would meet these criteria.

There was a lot of talk about the shared services agenda and I made my views clear that I think not enough attention is paid to scrutiny.  There must be effective scrutiny of how the public pound is spent and how public services are delivered.  We should not be promoting more shared services unless and until there are effective scrutiny measures in place.