Agenda item

The Chair welcomed Councillor Zoe McGhee, Chair of the Levelling Up Communities Scrutiny Review Group to the meeting.

The Scrutiny Commission considered a report of the Executive Director for Adults, Communities and Wellbeing which provided an update on the progress to date with the Levelling Up Communities Scrutiny Review.  The report was marked as item 7 on the agenda.

Since the last meeting of the Commission, there had been three walks and community meetings in each of the three neighbourhoods identified as left behind, Avondale Grange (Kettering), Kingswood & Hazel Leys (Corby) and Queensway (Wellingborough).  Themed meetings of the Scrutiny Review Group were also held on anti-social behaviour and knife crime; and exclusion from education, skills and employment, with possible future meetings themed around the built environment and access to services.

During discussion, the following principle points were noted:

i.     Councillor Zoe McGhee, Chair of the Scrutiny Review Group, wished to thank everyone who had helped to set up the workshops.  These had been well attended and the outcomes from those had help to direct the topics now being looked at.  One of the key outcomes was looking at how could we work together to deliver positive change and not just leaving it to the Council.

ii.    The need for groups and organisations being supported to access external funding was highlighted.  This could be by helping help them to write up bids for funding, seeing if those processes could be simplified and upskilling people who are already part of those groups to write bids themselves.

iii.   The built environment in which people lived was a key area because if an area was brought up, people would be more likely to want to stay there rather than move away.

iv.   It was essential that the lessons learnt from this review went across other areas of North Northamptonshire.

v.    It was noted that Scrutiny had a pot of money for its work and it was proposed that we looked at giving a special responsibility allowance to the Chair of the Scrutiny Review Group to acknowledge all of the work she had put into the review.

At this point, Councillors John and Zoe McGhee, declared an interest and left the meeting.

vi.   The Director of Governance and HR confirmed that a total allowance of £40,000 had been allocated to the Scrutiny function, however consideration needed to be given to how and when special responsibility allowances would be paid.  It was also suggested that this issue could be fed into the Independent Renumeration Panel’s review of Members’ allowances.

vii.  It was noted that during the last round of levelling up funding bids, no bid had been submitted by the Council, however we were keen to make a bid this time around.  Councillor Graham Lawman advised that a shortlist for funding bids was currently being developed for North Northamptonshire.

It was moved by Councillor Matt Binley and seconded by Councillor Jim Hakewill that the Director of Governance and HR bring a report back to the next meeting on a process to pay allowances to the Chairs of task and finish groups.  On being put to the vote, the motion was carried.

RESOLVED:

(i)      That the Director of Governance and HR bring a report to the next meeting on how and when to pay allowances for the Chairs of task and finish groups, with any allowance for the Chair of the Levelling Up Communities Scrutiny Review Group being backdated to today’s meeting.

(ii)     That the progress of the Levelling Up Communities Review Group (SRWG) be noted.