Monitoring officers told to “step up to plate” in report on scrutiny post-Rotherham

Monitoring officers must “step up to the plate” in ensuring the constitution of their organisations functions correctly and protects those whom it is designed to protect, the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS) has argued in a response to the Rotherham child sexual exploitation cases.

Following Professor Alexis Jay’s recent report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, the CFPS said scrutiny carried out both there and before the mid-Staffordshire scandal came to light “seems to have placed too much store on the assurances of people in authority that everything was fine”.

It suggested that even if those conducting scrutiny had wanted to ask challenging questions, it appeared that they did not always have access to the information to do so.

“This is a systemic and cultural problem which goes wider than these two localities,” the Centre claimed.

In its report, What Rotherham and Mid-Staffordshire tell us about scrutiny, and where it’s lacking, the CfPS said there were three key questions which scrutiny should be asking, not just in relation to child protection or healthcare, but every service. These were:

1. How do I know that this council, and those with whom it works, will be aware when significant problems rear their head – and do I have confidence that this information will be acted on?
2. Does scrutiny itself have access to information which will allow me to confidently challenge, on the basis of evidence, the council’s assertions about the quality of a service?
3. Do council officers and officers from other agencies agree and accept that scrutiny has this role to play?

Jessica Crowe, the Centre’s executive director, said the CFPS still saw “far too many councils stuck in the habits of the old committee system: discussing agenda items at scrutiny committees where the only source of evidence is a report written and presented by a chief officer”.

She added: “Very often these are reports presented ‘to note’, requiring no action, allowing officers to feel that they have ‘consulted’ members, and members that they have received an ‘update’, and that all is well.

“Scrutiny members should be playing a much more active role in challenging councils, and their partners, to back up their assertions of the quality of service that public agencies provide to local people.”

Crowe said the lessons were not just for scrutiny. “Council leaderships – political and managerial – have responsibility for creating effective arrangements for scrutiny and challenge. Too often we hear leaders and senior officers complaining that scrutiny members are ineffective, or rejecting as naïve the very idea that they should encourage better scrutiny.”

She continued: “Leaders and chief executives are responsible each year for signing off the council’s accounts, including the Annual Governance Statement in which they confirm that there are effective arrangements for good governance, probity and accountability. Where scrutiny is accepted as weak or where there is overt or covert collusion in keeping it weak, it is hard to see how such statements can reasonably be made.

“Anecdotally we know that a worrying number of scrutiny functions experience obstruction around access to information, leading in extreme cases to councillors using the Freedom of Information Act to require their own council to provide them with information to which they are already entitled. Likewise the officers who support scrutiny – often relatively junior compared with the chief officers whom members may be questioning – can be pressured not to let the members get too close to a problem.”

Crowe suggested that the role and status of statutory scrutiny officers might need to be strengthened, and monitoring officers needed to ensure the constitution protected those whom it was designed to protect.

“CfPS is calling on all councils to ask themselves some hard questions about whether their governance arrangements, including those for member scrutiny, are effective, robust and involve getting out and listening to those whom services are designed to protect,” she said. “If they can’t answer ‘Yes’ to our three questions, councils – and the people they serve – are more at risk of abuse, sub-standard services or inefficiency.”