To consider the Panel’s work programme for the remainder of the Municipal year.

To include consideration of items scheduled on the Cabinet Forward Plan.

The Chairman said that he had asked Panel Members at the last meeting to send him suggestions for items to include on the work programme, but he had not received any. He asked if residents would be able to submit suggestions for topics to be scrutinised.

Mark Beeley, Democratic Services Officer, confirmed that residents were able to submit topic suggestions on the website. Messages would go out on social media to advertise this and any items that were received would be added to the work programme. Mark Beeley said that a suggestion had been received a few months ago on an RBWM App and a report was currently being drafted. Once this was ready, it would be brought to the Panel for consideration.

The Chairman asked if this could be added into the ‘items suggested but not yet programmed’ section of the work programme.

Councillor Werner suggested having a finance update come to the Panel for the meeting in October 2021. He suggested having an item on procurement and whether it was possible to add in equalities as a requirement for any contract which RBWM entered in to.

The Chairman suggested to wait until Nikki Craig had asked the question and reported back to the Panel on the discussion that had taken place around equalities in the previous agenda item. The Panel could then determine whether it needed to be added to the work programme.

Adele Taylor confirmed that the Panel would be seeing the finance updates and they would be added to the work programme.

Councillor Hill suggested performance monitoring against the corporate plan and the customer journey. Councillor Hill said that RBWM was carrying a lot of debt and suggested a task and finish group on how the council would clear the debts, also looking at developer contributions from development sites. He asked what changes needed to be made to scrutiny to make it more effective, Cabinet needed to welcome challenge from scrutiny.

The Chairman said that the suggestion on the scrutiny process was a statement rather than a suggestion to be added to the work programme.

Councillor Hill explained that scrutiny should make written statements and suggestions to Cabinet which should be answered in public forums.

Adele Taylor said that developer contributions were picked up as part of the Medium Term Financial Strategy and so was not sure of how a specific task and finish group on the topic would work. Adele Taylor suggested that the topic could fall under the remit of the Audit and Governance Committee, she would be happy to discuss the potential scope with Councillor L Jones.

Councillor Sharpe said that he believed the equalities issues discussed were already part of the procurement process but thought it would be best to wait and see what Nikki Craig came back with before deciding to add it as an item on the work programme.

The Chairman suggested that the clerk could take the suggestions away and work with the Panel and officers after the meeting to see where suggestions could be added to the work programme.