Agenda item

5.1

Public Question in respect of the Scrutiny Review

Mr Alan Kewley referred to a question he had asked at the meeting of the Committee in April which enquired when the public and community groups would have the opportunity to be involved in the Scrutiny Review? James Henderson, Director of Policy, Performance and Communications had previously stated that the intention was to engage with the public and community groups further into the process.

The Leader of the Council had also previously emphasised the important role that Local Area Partnerships (LAPs) could play in public engagement. However, Mr Kewley believed that the LAPs were not working as they had been intended to. Therefore, there was a gap in how the public could be engaged with the Council.

5.2

Public Question in respect of Access to Information

Alan Kewley asked how public access to information could be improved? He commented that most of the time members of the public had to undertake a lot of work to get access to the information they required. When they did manage to access the information it was often too little or too much. Information published also needed to contain more plain English language as it was often difficult to understand. Mr Kewley finally asked if it was within the remit of the newly appointed Head of Communications at the Council to improve communications with the public?

The Chair of the Committee, Councillor Chris Weldon, requested that answers to the questions be provided under item 8 ‘Scrutiny Review – Progress Report’ and a written response be provided and circulated to members of the Committee.

5.3

Public Question in respect of Scrutiny Review

Mr Nigel Slack, speaking on behalf of Sheffield for Democracy, commented that the group had submitted information in the early stages of the Scrutiny Review. He welcomed the latest report, on the agenda for the meeting under item 8, particularly paragraphs 2.5 and 3.4. However, there were some concerns over community engagement. Mr Slack asked why the public were not more engaged with the LAPs? Mr Slack also questioned whether the membership of Scrutiny Committees could be revised, particularly where there was evidence of a Member conflict of interest? Mr Slack concluded by urging the Committee to ensure the Scrutiny Review was a continuing process and was regularly reviewed to enable Scrutiny to respond to current issues such as the Jay report. Mr Slack also made a plea that word documents were not uploaded in the doc.x format as this made them unable to be downloaded for users of older word formats.

Councillor Weldon asked that the issues be addressed under the Scrutiny Review Progress Report item.