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Overview and Scrutiny Annual Report 2021/22

Overview and scrutiny during COVID-19

As we all know, this has been an unprecedented and challenging year and the ripples caused by the pandemic will be felt for some time to come. Every department of the council has been involved in supporting the residents of Wiltshire through the pandemic and Overview and Scrutiny has needed to adapt its approach to support that effort.

In normal circumstances, Overview and Scrutiny operates four committees, all meeting regularly and providing 'critical friend' input on most decisions taken by the council's executive. However, as the pandemic situation began to unfold in April 2020 it was agreed that Overview and Scrutiny should temporarily switch to a streamlined model, maintaining scrutiny's crucial role while allowing officers to focus on the urgent day-to-day challenges. The streamlined model comprised the following:

  • Wiltshire COVID-19 Response Task Group: A dedicated working group of 7 members who met regularly with the Leader, Chief Executive and Corporate Leadership Team to receive updates on the pandemic and scrutinise the council's response.
  • Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee: The council's lead Overview and Scrutiny committee continued to hold public meetings online throughout the pandemic and oversaw the work of the Wiltshire COVID-19 Response Task Group.
  • Children's, Environment and Health Select Committees: To allow officers to focus on the incident response, formal meetings of these committees were paused between April 2020 and January 2021. However, they continued to meet informally, discussing issues of local concern and agreeing key questions for the Executive and officers. These were then taken forward by the COVID-19 Response Task Group and OS Management Committee.
  • Briefings for select committee chairmen and vice-chairmen: The lead Overview and Scrutiny members were provided with regular  briefings on proposals coming to the council's Cabinet, during the temporary pause of select committee meetings.

While COVID-19 remains in our lives, since March 2021 the council's full select committee structure has been back in place and has been providing Overview and Scrutiny input across the full Cabinet work programme and beyond.

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