THE  ROLE OF THE C.L.S.C. : THE THEORY AND THE PRACTICE 

 THE THEORY

Evidently, all is sweetness in light, according to Cornwall County Council's Guide on Policy Development and Scrutiny, entitled 'Open to Scrutiny?'. We are told that it throws "the spotlight on a little known and vital aspect of our local democracy - its five Policy Development and Scrutiny Development Committees and the dozens of Single Issue Panels which report to them. These Scrutiny Committees ensure the Council's decisions are held to account, monitor services, and performances, develop policies, but most important of all investigate issues  important to individuals and communities.''

The Guide makes clear that  "if you feel that there are any outstanding issues that have not been addressed we want to hear from". A form is even provided for the dictation of suggestions and after a penultimate sentence, which features a promise to acknowledge the receipt of suggestions and to let people know what happens next, there is alas the inevitable cop-out which reads "Unfortunately, we're are NOT always able to review topics suggested." Quite!!!

Whatever criticisms may be levelled at Cornwall County Council, the theory of its modus operandi, which it is never hesitant to plug, is certainly NOT one of them.

THE PRACTICE

Nothing would  be more erroneous than  to assume that the Community Life Scrutiny Committee [C.L.S.C.] is a vibrant and vigilant committee constantly challenging the quality of the Council's decisions and keeping Senior Management and the Executive  on its toes. Deprived of real independence and comprehensive information, which would enable it to focus on its real purpose, it is in truth reduced to a mere rubber-stamping function.  Its emasculation IS evident in a number of aspects , which will be illustrated by particular reference to the Internal Audit report :

ASPECT NO 1  The Committee is NOT privy to the ESSENTIAL INFORMATION, which would enable it to scrutinise effectively.

It is a truism that the control of any organisation depends upon the control of information. A small group of senior officers in this Council would appear to be in  this powerful position. Whatever, the fanciful aspirations and illusions, which may appear in the literature which this Council freely dispenses and even its constitution itself, the undeniable reality is that the Council is officer-controlled. If a portfolio holder can bitterly complain that she is not permitted to see reports relating to her area of responsibility, which can have vital relevance to decision-making, it may be imagined that the tightness of the control of information is unlikely to be relaxed with regard to the working of a scrutiny committee.

That  this is no idle speculation can been seen in the case of last year's report by Internal Audit, where there was a failure to disclose vital information which was crucial to the evaluation of decision-making by the C.L.S.C. Three elements in particular must be mentioned.

FIRSTLY, the Head of Audit Services in his presentation to the Committee on 6 February, 2003 included a list of 12 Key Findings, which were said to have been revealed by its testing,  Incidentally , though  they had been made largely known to Internal Audit BEFORE its investigations began and which are contained in my own Sandy Lane Report, which predated the Internal Audit report by over 5 weeks, they are listed below, in tabulated form.

Significantly, what is NOT revealed IS the CRUCIAL significance of a BOND or DEPOSIT CASH deposit as SURETY in connection with an APC procedure or a S 38 road adoption agreement.

If a developer, or landowner, begins the construction of dwellings BEFORE security has been lodged  then a criminal offence has been committed and it is possible that this authority, which Audit acknowledges has taken no enforcement action [See Point 7 above] has  by its negligence, aided and abetted the committing of a criminal offence.

Even more disturbing is the fact that there has been a widespread  failure to secure  surety BEFORE the construction of dwellings has begun. This is a lawful duty imposed on the Authority by the Highway Act, 1980 and its objective is to ensure that homeowners are protected against the possibility of a developers failing in his obligation to complete the street works. Quite clearly the Authority has been in breach of its legal obligations for a number of years. There are therefore grounds for assuming that  it has acted ULTRA VIRES OR UNLAWFULLY.  Notwithstanding, the Head of Audit Services apparently did not consider this situation to be worthy of inclusion as one of his key findings even though it was a requirement of his protocol to report a suspicion of such unlawful action to the County Treasurer and the Monitoring Officer, who as the officer responsible for ensuring that the Council operates within the law is required to report such matters to each Member of the Council.

SECONDLY, Internal Audit produces NO rationale for its recommendations as a whole let alone any justification for each of its 31  recommendations.

This is in no way surprising because the format of a report which inverts the conventional procedure by listing the conclusions at the beginning and the analysis at the end in 4 extensive appendices. Therefore, it becomes impossible to determine exactly how the recommendations are developed from the analysis and, in view of the fact that the appendices were clearly not intended originally for the eyes of anyone but officers, it is rather difficult to accept that this was other than deliberate. It would appear to be significant that only the recommendations and the introductory section, but not the appendices which contain page after page of damaging entries, are available for public scrutiny.

It is takes little intelligence to grasp that there is a fundamental flaw in recommendations which clearly are designed to deal with procedural defects.   Audit's key findings [ listed previously], which  strangely exclude the INEXCUSABLE failure to implement council policies and a statutory duty, does include the LITANY of SHORTCOMINGS relating to the inadequacy of inspection, enforcement and documentation procedures.  Moreover, it is apparent, as I myself have been able to establish from a detailed examination of the documentation at County Highways, that even the Quality Assurance development control systems, which were supposedly designed to check that inspection procedures were being carried out, were in state of complete DISARRAY.

The  wholesale breakdown throughout the system for such a long period of time cannot be simply ascribed to flawed procedures. In some cases, perfectly sound procedures to ensure the discharge of council policy and the statutory duty were in fact clearly prescribed. This certainly was true of inspection procedures which, despite the presence of  much vaunted Quality Assurance control systems, were just NOT being carried out. It had been  a proud boast of  the Council, which sought to convince us and no doubt the Audit Commission of its super-efficiency, that  "QA audits would take place regularly to ensure the inspection procedures were being carried out." The entries on Page after Page of the extensive Appendix 2 of the Internal Report, which are NOT available for public inspection, amply confirm my own observations at Sandy Lane and on the adjacent residential estates, documented in my own report, and are state of affairs which are once a striking testimony to the  extent of the prevalent chaotic shambles and the hollowness of the Council's QA claims.   Such a situation can only be a serious indictment of senior management, which is after all supposed to undertake periodic reviews to ensure that the system is functioning effectively.

If inspection procedures were in place but were not being implemented, others, unbelievably, such as enforcement measures, do not appear even to have existed.  On page 39 of its report, Internal Audit notes that "In our discussions with officers, we have not been informed af ANY case where the Authority has initiated proceedings against developers for offences under Sectio 219 (2) of the Act" Moreover, on Page 13, recommendation 9 is equally revealing when it indicates that "The county should produce a POLICY with regard to enforcement in the absence of any other recognised guidelines."

The response to such  laxness and the incredible level of irresponsibility revealed by the failure to implement Council policy and a statutory duty, to carry out vital inspection procedures and to construct a credible enforcement policy demands more than procedural modifications suggested by Internal Audit. Members, who are accountable to their electorates for the efficient conduct of the Council's affairs, should require more than  the creation of a simple road map so that Council policy and a statutory duty can be implemented.  After all, the notion that, highly paid officers of senior management have been incapable of such implementation and that an operational template, where the common sense steps which should be followed to achieve that simple objective, is really beyond belief.  What is required is NOT a glossing over of the enormity of the shortcomings but a firm indication that inexcusable failure requires at the very least a serious consideration of disciplinary action. Anything less is surely a betrayal of the people of this county, whose interests  Members are elected to protect.

Hence the notion, that the 31 recommendations were a reasonable response to  a disturbing situation which was of some years' duration and that crucial issues of responsibility and accountability were NOT involved, is NOT something which one would expect to be  peddled by an employee of this Council, who is also associated with the Audit Commission. to a scrutiny committee.

THIRDLY, two officers of Chief Officer status, the Director of Planning, Transport and Estates and the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer are regularly in attendance at meetings, presumably to offer advice and guidance to this committee. My understanding is that it is the responsibility of officers to give balanced and impartial advice to ensure that informed decision making takes place. However, it has to be said that this does NOT appear to have been the case in this instance where the need to secure the implementation of the 31 recommendations as a matter of urgency would seem to have been the overriding, and in fact the sole, consideration.

Indeed, the plan originally was for the Committee to consider the recommendations of a report which had been issued only on 6 January 2003 at its meeting on 24 January 2003. It would be difficult to conceive of a more striking  demonstration  of this Council's  attitude and its commitment to  transparency and effective scrutiny than the placing of this  vital matter as the LAST item on the agenda for this meeting. Furthermore, the expectation that Members could assess the merits of   Internal Audit's proposals  without having the opportunity to  examine the report itself, and thus to assess the relevance of its rationale, similarly made a mockery of  the splendid aspirations enunciated  in "Open to Scrutiny?".

On 18 January, when I discovered this unsatisfactory and apparently squalid  manoeuvre, I wrote to express my concern to the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer. [CLICK here  to view] The response was to call a special meeting of the Committee for 6 February, 2003 and to allow Members sight of the District Audit report before the meeting. However, my request for ample time to allow for the thorough assimilation of this  complex and detailed document, where conclusions were not developed from the textual analysis, was NOT met.

To allow only a few days for hard pressed Members of a Scrutiny Committee, the overwhelming majority of whom had little, if any experience, of the issues involved, to fully digest such a document was hardly the sort of response which would have been expected from a Council genuinely committed, as it was not hesitant to claim, to the principle of effective scrutiny. In any case, it is inexplicable why there a sudden recognition of the need for such urgency to  implement the Audit proposals when for years, an attitude of indifference to the problems, even among the uppermost level of management, seems to have  prevailed. [In this connection, the recent admssion by both the Director of P.T. and E. and the Chief Executive that the problems stemmed from the budgetary cuts of the 1990s is not without significance.] Had there  been a manifest desire by the two Chief Officers and the Head of Audit Services to enlighten Members FULLY of  the true nature of the problems involved, a different situation would surely have existed.

ASPECT NO 2   The determination of AGENDAS is in practice, if not in theory, under the effective CONTROL  of officers.

EXAMPLE 1  The nature of the original agenda for the meeting  of this committee on 24 January, 2003.

The Internal Audit report, which Management recognised to be of such importance that its recommendations required immediate implementation, was not given the a prominent position on the agenda as might have been expected but was actually relegated to the position of last item on the agenda. Furthermore, that Members of a Scrutiny Committee could be expected to make a decision without having had any opportunity to examine the report itself and its comments, makes a mockery of the County Council's Open to Scrutiny? publication.

That this agenda arrangement should have been acceptable to the Chairman and Vice-chairman of this committee, who attended the pre-agenda meeting when the agenda is approved, is bewildering. Whatever the explanation may be, it is difficult to believe that the two Members would willingly have agreed, had they been  FULLY apprised of the situation and the implications of the agenda. All too often, the agendas of this committee's meetings seem to bear unmistakable signs of undue officer influence with little evidence of  any decisive input by this Committee into the determination of the issues, which it feels it should be scrutinising.

Never, to my knowledge has the attendance of any Officer or any Portfolio Holder been required by this Committee when undertaking its scrutiny role. It seems to have been content with being fed a diet of officer presentations rather than insisting on a rigorous questioning of Senior Officers and Executive Members. An abundance of officers seems always to be in attendance at its meetings, yet no-one has seen fit to remind us of our responsibilities. The direction in which it proceeds seems not to lie within its power to determine and, in spite of superficial appearances to the contrary, would appear to be a reflection of the underlying reality, which pervades the modus operandi of this officer-led Authority.

EXAMPLE 2  The action  of the Chief Executive in imposing  agenda change on  the meeting of  9 October, 2002.

The agenda for this meeting indicated that the Director of P.T. and E. would be implementing "a detailed operational review of development control procedures, systems and staffing to ascertain whether the prescribed methods and procedures are being utilised and complied with". The fact that I had already repeatedly pointed out in written correspondence to this officer, as well as to the Chief Executive and the Monitoring Officer that the prescribed methods and procedures were NOT being carried out was conveniently forgotten. However, it was reassuring to learn that to provide " an impartial approach, an officer from the Chief Executive's Department will undertake the review".(!)

It would appear that the Chief Executive, who had been singularly inattentive to my concerns, depicted in the copied correspondence which I had forwarded to him in the preceding months, suddenly became aware of the need for action. Whether this was a reaction to the interception, and impounding, by the Monitoring Officer on 4 October  of a highly critical letter, which I had written to my colleagues on the C.L.S.C. or to the arrangement which I had made with the Head of Audit Services to carry out an investigation on 30 September, it is not possible to say.  However, what is clear is that at this meeting on 9 October, it was apparent that a decision had already been made for an internal audit investigation to be made at the instigation of the Chief Executive.

ASPECT NO 3  The MINUTES about which there is CONSTANT COMPLAINT seem to be constructed with far more consideration for their ACCEPTABILITY to senior officers than for the need for ACCURACY and BALANCE.

Of the many instances which could be quoted, the minutes of the 8 May 2003 meeting  

are a particularly good example. While my favourable comments about the Director and Network Manager were recorded in full, my less than favourable comments relating to the former County Surveyor, who is now the Chief Executive, were omitted.

I would not have objected had my  comments regarding the two officers also been excluded but to cherrypick is not acceptable as it does not give a balanced record of proceedings. My remarks regarding the Chief Exectuive did not reflect any personal animosity but merely recognised the fact that if, as the present Director has claimed to the C.L.S.C.,  the failures of recent years were systemic in nature, responsibility could not be evaded and ultimately would presumably have to be borne by the officer who was charged with the onus of operating the system as a whole, at the time when the failure was rife.

When the minutes were discussed at the June meeting, my claim that the minute as recorded was not correct and was unbalanced received unanimous support. Yet there was still a reluctance to present the minute in its correct form in the minutes of the August meeting and it was not before the September meeting that the corrected version finally appeared.

The minutes clerk was obviously embarrassed when asked to explain the delay and, in the presence of the Chairman and myself, reluctantly acknowledged that the responsibility lay with the County Solicitor/Monitoring Officer.

Given the scale of the inaccuracies in the minutes, there seems to be a compelling case for the taping of meetings and for the over-ruling of officers' insistence, in defiance of two requests by this committee,  that its minutes should be presented to the full Council only after their accuracy has been finally approved.

It is also difficult to accept the argument of administrative officers that there is no need to disregard the traditional practice of not recording the names of the proposers and seconders of motions at meetings, when there has been at least one occasion when  the possible implications of such an unsatisfactory practice may be deduced from the fact that no member has been able to recall whether he or she, or anyone else for that matter, had either proposed or seconded a particular motion!!  

ASPECT NO 4 : RESOLUTIONS of this Committee do NOT necessarily see the LIGHT of DAY.

EXAMPLE 1

The most glaring example of this can be found in the minutes of the meeting of 9 October, 2002, when most of the 4 resolutions were ignored.  

The FIRST resolution ["The wide ranging county wide review of  issues raised by G P Hicks and other Members."] was NOT carried out.

This in itself undermines the claim, made by the Head of Audit Services to the Committee on 6 February 2002, that "we endeavoured to ensure that  all areas of concern to Mr Hicks were addressed.''.

The matters of the widespread occupation of houses BEFORE the issue of a Part 1 Certificate, which has serious health and safety implications and is contrary to the requirements of the Cornwall Design Guide, presumably compiled by the Chief Executive when he was the County Surveyor, together with the widespread contravention of council policy and a statutory duty AND its implications for the modus operandi of the Council and the state of member-officer relationships were TOTALLY DISREGARDED.

The SECOND resolution that Local Members should be consulted by the Auditor was disregarded in its entirety. In fact, the only member  consulted was myself and most of my criticism was ignored!!

In the case of the THIRD resolution, which related to the involvement of the Portfolio Holder, no evidence has been produced to enable this to be meaningfully evaluated.

Whether the committee, as opposed to management, would feel that the FOURTH resolution, which related to "the APPROPRIATE reporting of findings to members" was in fact met by the original proposal to to include the whole matter as the LAST item on the agenda at its meeting on 24 January 2003, without an opportunity of having sight of the report itself, is perhaps rather doubtful!!!!

EXAMPLE NO 2

The minutes of the Committee on 6 February, 2003 record that, in addition to accepting the recommendations of the Internal Audit report, it was resolved that

d] an independent review of processes be undertaken and

e] a special meeting of the Community Life Policy Development and Scrutiny Committee

be held on 8 May 2003 to consider the report of the Independent Review.

It is recorded in the agenda for 8 May 2003 meeting that :

"In order to ensure that this review has a clear brief and that the review be undertaken with a suitable organisation, the Director of P.T. and E. has discussed options for the review with the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of this committee." The recommendation was that "the Chairman of this committee, in conjunction with the Vice-Chairman and the Director of P.T. and E. agree the brief for the independent review of the process and select a suitable organisation to undertake the review".

I have to say that a quick perusal of subsequent minutes of this committee has failed to reveal any progress on what must be assumed to be a difficult matter. There appears to be no evidence that even the preliminary problems of establishing the brief and of identifying a suitable person to conduct review have 19 months later been resolved.

This state of affairs appears to be especially extraordinary in view of minutes of the committee's meeting  on 9 October 2002 when, in addition to noting that an internal audit investigation would be undertaken into road agreements with developers, it was resolved that :

b] the review of the development control processes relating to statutory highway planning, development control, developer led road agreements and estate road adoption, in accordance with the Terms of Reference attached as Appendix(1) to the Report, be noted subject to Appendix (c) (I) including all stretches of new roads and

c] the outcome of the review referred to in (b) above be reported back to a future meeting of this committee.

It is evident that the committee had even approved  Mr R.A. Andrew of the Chief Executive's department to  conduct the review!!!!

Perhaps, one should question the competence of both  the Director and the Scrutiny Committee itself.

EXAMPLE 3

The failure to act on the second of the four motions approved on 26 June 2003, when it was resolved, in connection with the impending appraisal of the likely cost of the repair of estate roads brought about by hopelessly inadequate road inspection procedures highlighted in my own and the Internal Audit reports that :

"All members of the County Council be notified of the actions to be taken and asked to notify the Director of Planning, Transportation and Estates if they have any concerns over defects in their areas"

Yet 3 months after this resolution was passed and even after the time when we had been led to believe that the appraisal would be completed,  we learn from a recent letter, which the Director circulated to all members of the County Council that,

"In order for the report to be as comprehensive as possible, I have agreed with the Adam Paynter, the Community Life Chairman that it would be helpful to learn of any particular problems that you are aware of in your electoral division with estate roads that have been built in the last ten years and adopted by the Council. Please pass this information on to Mark Stephenson by 3 October 2003"!!!!

The value of this exercise has been reduced by a three month delay and it is interesting to see that the Director is presenting himself as the instigator of this move rather than as the belated reactor to a resolution by members of this committee. In view of his performance referred to in the previous example, this hardly increases confidence in the Director of P.T. and E. or indeed in the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of this committee.

EXAMPLE 4

The disregard of the widespread feeling of the meeting on 12 December, 2002 when the minutes recorded that :

" ........a number  of members asked that  consideration should be given to identifying in the County Council agenda those minutes which had been approved by the parent committee as a correct record to assist both members and the general public."

Given the scale of the errors in the minutes, the practice of submitting those minutes to the County Council before they had been corrected and approved, irrespective of what  the practice may or may not have been over many years, was not one which met with the approval of members. Two years later, this unsatisfactory practice continues despite the view of this committee.

ASPECT NO 5 : The sheer VOLUME of  papers submitted only a few days before  meetings means that  under the existing arrangements EFFECTIVE scrutiny is IMPOSSIBLE.

Unfortunately, it must be said that,  so long as there is NO attempt to INSIST that things MUST change with the committee having a decisive say in the control of its modus operandi, any question of effective scrutiny must remain no more than a THEORETICAL construct.

NOTE THAT THIS MATERIAL WAS SUBMITTED TO EXTERNAL AUDIT AT THE BEGINNING OF ITS INVESTIGATION INTO THE INTERNAL AUDIT REPORT, BUT IT WAS TOTALLY IGNORED.

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