Overview and Scrutiny at Newcastle-under-Lyme

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Rt Hon. Hazel Blears MP, has made known her views on political blogging. She is quoted as referring to a number of blogs as "fuelling cynicism". Leading political bloggers have responded to this with statements indicating that their role is "not to add value." This has doubtless sparked off many debates across the political blogosphere (is that a new word?), but it got me thinking.

I don't think for one minute that this blog fuels cynicism, but I do hope that it adds value. Does that mean this kind of thing is what the Secretary of State is looking for? That is of no consequence to me, I am more interested in what the readers of this blog think of it. But on a wider issue I pose this A-Level-like question: Overview and Scrutiny - fuelling cynicism or adding value?

What do you think? I promise not to grade your answers, but I think it is healthy to take some time to reflect on what we do. Indeed, we will be looking to examine the effectiveness of our own Overview and Scrutiny arrangements in Newcastle early in the new year, but I am more interested in what anyone or everyone has to say about Overview and Scrutiny. Amongst Members there are probably mixed views that it has had the effect of fuelling greater cynicism and creating disaffection amongst councillors. The same will probably be said by officers too.

So what do you think? And what do you think the future holds?

The Centre for Public Scrutiny has confirmed that it will be holding their annual series of parliamentaty seminars on the following dates:

• Wednesday 19 November 2008
• Wednesday 17 December 2008
• Wednesday 14 January 2009
• Wednesday 11 February 2009
• Wednesday 4 March 2009

These seminars are designed to give local authority scrutineers the opportunity to learn about parliamentary scrutiny and discuss the effectiveness of the function with peers from other councils and parliamentary committees. In order to encourage focussed and practical learning, CfPS will be running the session 'Putting the ? back into scrutiny - New skills and techniques for effective questioning', which will run as an afternoon session on these days.

It is recommended Elected Members attend this event, rather than officers, as questioning skills will be of more use to Members. The council can only send one Member to this event, so if you are interested in representing the Borough Council please let me know here.

The seminars will run from 11.00am until 3.00pm. A sample programme can be found here

It may be a little late in the day, but here are the Cabinet decisions made at its meeting on 22 October 2008.

I'm sure the reference to an Energy Efficiency and Carbon Production Officer is incorrect, I think it should probably read Carbon REDUCTION Officer.

On 29 October 2008, the meeting of the full Council agreed to appoint Cllr Stephen Sweeney as the Chair of the Cleaner Greener & Safer Communities Committee. Cllr Sweeney succeeds Cllr Tomkins as Chair of this committee.

On a slightly wider issue, wouldn't it be nice to see the same enthusiasm for democracy (and patience in a queue!) over here as these guys are showing in America?!