What is Overview and Scrutiny?

Spot the Difference

There are two main roles of overview and scrutiny - policy development and review (“overview”) and holding the Mayor to account (“scrutiny”).

Overview

Policy development and review provides Members with an opportunity to look at how the Council and other organisations are delivering services. Matters of public concern can be investigated with reports produced detailing the information considered, key findings and recommendations. Reports are then forwarded to the appropriate decision maker (usually the Mayor) and progress against the recommendations is monitored.

Scrutiny

The scrutiny function acts as a "watchdog" and monitors the decisions that the Mayor is taking. This enables the Mayor to be held to account for the decisions he makes. Scrutiny can be completed in a number of ways such as monitoring of the Council's Forward Plan; giving views on policy framework documents; and post-decision scrutiny. The latter includes the call-in procedure which puts a decision 'on hold' pending re-examination of relevant information.

For more details of how the Overview and Scrutiny function is structured in Torbay visit the overview and scrutiny Structure page.

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