Brent Cabinet fails to take scrutiny seriously

Interventions by Cllr Neil Nerva and Cllr Roxanne Mashari at the Brent Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday centred on the failure of the Cabinet to properly consider the recommendations made by the Committee and its Task Groups.

An example was the recent Air Quality report where the Cabinet merely 'noted' its recommendations. This could mean that officers go away and make detailed action plans or just that the recommendations are vaguely borne in mind or put on the back burner.

The most telling document presented at the Committee was the 'Tracker' which records the Executive/Cabinet response to the two Scrutiny Committees' recommendations. Out of 18 reports only one - the Air Quality Report has a response, and that was just to 'note'.

Click bottom right for full page:

Cllr Mashari questioning officers on the latest Council Assets report complained that there was less information in the latest reports than previous ones that had been referred back as inadequate. She was told that information had been withheld because of 'commercial considerations.'

Cllr Nerva demanded proper responses based on good practice. The information below may help both councillors in their demand for proper process. However well Scrutiny Committees do their work they are of little use if then ignored by the Cabinet.

The Centre for Public Scrutiny publishes a Good Scrutiny Guide LINK 

1.2.1 Powers in relation to councils: in general,
1.2.1.1. Scrutiny can:

• Require information from the council. Councillors sitting on scrutiny committees have broad information access rights which means that they can and should be able to have access to information even on matters exempt for reason of commercial confidentiality, and the other exemptions found in Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972. More information on information rights can be found in section 4.1 below and at section 5 of the guidance.
  
  
• Require attendance from council officers and councillors. Members of the executive invited to attend scrutiny committee meetings, and council officers issued with similar invitations, are expected to do so. While the law does not specify the seniority of officers who should be invited to give evidence, it will usually be most appropriate for senior officers to attend, even where questions are being asked about operational delivery. More information on engagement with councils officers and executive-side councillors can be found in section 2.1 below.
  
  

• Require that the council provides responses to scrutiny’s recommendations. Importantly, it is for scrutiny to determine the nature of the response. It is legitimate, for example, for scrutiny to require that a substantive response to each recommendation be made individually, with timescales for implementation; scrutiny can require that the executive do not respond to recommendations simply by “noting” them. More information on recommendations and impact can be found in section 5 below.  

Some councils continue to codify how and in what timescales this should be done – see pts 12 and 13 (below) in Camden Council’s constitution) . Brent does not appear to do this.

11. POLICY REVIEW AND DEVELOPMENT
The specific functions relating to policy development and review functions of Scrutiny Committees are detailed in Article 6 in Part Two of this Constitution. In addition, the terms of reference of the Resources and Corporate Performance Scrutiny Committee are listed in Part 3.

12. REPORTS FROM THE SCRUTINY COMMITTEES 

a.     The Scrutiny Committee may develop a protocol for the production of reports.

b.    Reports from the Scrutiny Committees shall be submitted within a reasonable
time of their completion to the Proper Officer for consideration by the Cabinet and/or the Council as appropriate.

c.     The Cabinet and/or Council shall send a written response to the Scrutiny
Committee within a reasonable time of considering a report, with a copy to the Proper Officer 1.

1 Section 21 B of the Local Government Act 2000 now imposes a time of limit of two months for the Cabinet/Council to reply

13.MAKING SURE THAT SCRUTINY REPORTS ARE CONSIDERED BY THE CABINET

a) The agenda for Cabinet meetings (including any meetings of single members and the Cabinet (Environment) Sub-Group) shall include an item entitled ‘Issues arising from scrutiny’. Reports of the Scrutiny Committees referred to the Cabinet shall be included at this point in the agenda within one month of it being submitted, unless either they have been considered in the context of the Cabinet’s deliberations on a substantive item on the agenda or the Cabinet gives reasons why they cannot be included and states when they will be considered. The Cabinet shall send a written response to the Scrutiny Committee within a reasonable time of considering a report, as set out in Rule 11 above.

It is worth remembering Barry Gardiner's warning after Labour won the overwhelming majority of Brent council seats. LINK

Scrutiny makes recommendation that Cabinet ring fence £700k for tree replacement and planting

Scrutiny Committee last night heard a presentation about street trees from Alison Durant of the Brent Trees Group and considered a recommendation that some of the one-off £700,000 made from the sale of additional cemetery space could be used to plant and maintain trees.

The recommendation had been made in the Budget Scrutiny Report:

To acknowledge the great work of the department in achieving these savings, we believe that this money should be ring fenced to be spent on a project with an environmental theme. In line with the council’s priorities, and the fact that Brent has recently declared a climate emergency, the obvious area for spending this money would be on improving air quality. There are actions that can be undertaken by the authority to improve air quality where a one-off capital injection of £700,000 would make a significant difference. 

We believe the most notable is in the area of tree planting. The council currently does not have the revenue budget to replace all diseased or dying trees it removes (outside of those removed as part of the footway improvement plan), or to plant all of the mature trees it would like to. The presence of mature trees on our streets can help to reduce levels of carbon in the atmosphere and significantly reduce storm water runoff. We will therefore be recommending to cabinet that this pot of money is ring fenced and invested in a tree planting scheme.

Responding Cllr Margaret McLennan, deputy leader and lead member for Finance and Resources, said that it could be considered but that the first obligation of the Council was to provide hard-pressed statutory services.

In her presentation Alison Durant made the following points:

• Brent views trees in terms of their immediate and future potential cost to the council.
• The council fails to calculate the value of its mature street trees.
• Brent Trees public meeting with the council was attended by 150 residents, which demonstrates the strength of feeling about the lack of care of street trees, removal of healthy street trees, lack of replacement of trees removed, and stumps being left in the place of removed trees.
• At the public meeting we made a presentation on the value of mature trees: amenity, carbon sequestration, air quality control, air cooling, storm-water run-off, to name a few.  Small replacement trees and new small trees will provide relatively little in terms of climate change mitigation compared to large mature trees. 
• We have a climate crisis; Brent Council has declared a “climate and ecological emergency”; Brent aspires to be the “cleanest and greenest” London borough; and yet it removes mature healthy trees that mitigate climate change in order to save money.
• Brent Council has historically underfunded trees; the council has admitted that it removes trees because it can’t afford to maintain them and yet the environment department underspends year after year. 
• There is a compelling case for committing additional funds to the maintenance of street trees, replacement of street trees, replacement of street trees removed historically.

Cllr Nerva pointed out that there were 12,000 tree stumps in Brent that needed to be removed. He suggested that there needed to be a more efficient use of Neighbourhood CIL money for trees perhaps led by an application from the Environment  Department and then allocated according to a set of criteria to local neighbourhoods. Cllr Tatler said she was talking  with Cllr Krupa Sheth (Lead Member for Environment) on how to approach the planting of trees.  The first priority should be to plant in the borough's areas of poor air quality.  The Environment Department was looking at methods of establishing a monetary asset value for all of the borough's trees.

Cllr Nerva is leading a Scrutiny Task Group on trees. Contact:
cllr.neil.nerva@brent.gov.uk

Scrutiny's recoemmendations will be considred by the Cabinet at its Budget meeting.