Scrutiny committee of new North Northants council wants access to secret meetings

The agendas and minutes of the task and finish groups making recommendations to the shadow council's executive are not being published.
Cllr Mick Scrimshaw chairs the scrutiny committee.Cllr Mick Scrimshaw chairs the scrutiny committee.
Cllr Mick Scrimshaw chairs the scrutiny committee.

The scrutiny committee for North Northants’ new council wants access to the secret meetings that are making recommendations to the authority’s shadow executive.

Eleven task and finish groups have been meeting for the past few weeks to look at the big issues around Northamptonshire’s local government reorganisation – such as levelling out council tax rates, the budget and appointing senior officers.

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They are headed up by a member of the executive and made up of a select group of councillors from across the area whose local authorities will be collapsed next April to make way for the North Northamptonshire unitary, ordered by Government in the wake of the county council’s now notorious financial collapse in 2018.

Northamptonshire county council was being run by Cllr Heather Smith when it collapsed. She was then ousted by her Conservative group as leader.Northamptonshire county council was being run by Cllr Heather Smith when it collapsed. She was then ousted by her Conservative group as leader.
Northamptonshire county council was being run by Cllr Heather Smith when it collapsed. She was then ousted by her Conservative group as leader.

But the overview and scrutiny committee – whose job it is to look at issues and help develop policy – has criticised the secret nature of the task and finish groups and at its first meeting on July 9 decided to formally ask the shadow council’s executive if they can have access to the meetings as well as seeing transcripts of what has been discussed so far.

The shadow authority’s interim chief executive Liz Elliott had told the committee, that the notes were not ‘widely available’ and the officers might be able to get a summary of discussions to give to the scrutiny committee.

But this was challenged by committee member Cllr Victoria Perry, who proposed the recommendation to make the request an official one to the shadow council’s executive, which is led by Kettering Council’s leader Russell Roberts.

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She said as a Northamptonshire county councillor she understood the importance of thorough scrutiny of the council’s workings.

She said: “We want to scrutinise it and we have to.

“There are some people who are quite happy to receive quite a lot of information. While I would welcome a precis of those discussions, I would like to have sight of the full transcript from those meetings and I can make a decision on how much detail I go into on that.

“My recommendation is that we have access to those task and finish groups on an observer capacity. They will all be done by Zoom so we can sit in the waiting room with no talking rights, if we choose to commit that time, which is what we are supposed to do as elected members, scrutinise the public purse and decisions.

“I don’t see why they (the executive) would have a problem with us observing the meeting – they have nothing to hide.”

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When questioned by fellow committee member Cllr Jo Beirne why involvement in the task and finish groups was needed, as scrutiny’s role was not to ‘micro manage’ other councillors, Cllr Perry said: “Having come through the crisis at the Northamptonshire County Council I see our role is critically important, as will do most of colleagues at the county. So we have learnt from experience of not doing it so well or having it blocked.”

Cllr Jim Hakewill, who seconded Cllr Perry’s recommendation, also had concerns about the secret nature of the task and finish groups.

He said he did not believe there was any legal basis on which scrutiny committee members were being excluded from viewing the task and finish groups.

He said: “All these task panels that are meeting in secret, are not having agendas or minutes, but are deciding on things we are talking about.

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“We cannot go along and listen. It still sits very uncomfortably with me that we can’t listen to that. It worries me a bit.

“Will we ever get minutes from these private, secret task and finish groups?”

Poor scrutiny was a key feature of the county council in the years running up to its collapse with councillors regularly refused information, which government inspector Max Caller said was wrong.

At the meeting the scrutiny committee, which is chaired by Cllr Mick Scrimshaw, also expressed their concern that they seemed to be scrutinising decisions after they were made by the shadow executive rather than before.

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Committee member Cllr Helen Harrison raised an issue that the majority of the 150 councillors who make up the North Northants shadow council had not yet been set up with email addresses.

So far only the executive and senior officers have been given an email.

The interim chief executive said there were capacity and licence issues but it was being dealt with.

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