Scrutiny Committee

This afternoon there was a meeting of the Council's Scrutiny Committee. Generally these reports were very positive. I raised some concerns about the two-site campus at St Mary's Primary School in Lochee. I was disappointed that there was no support for my proposal that we should implement the recommendation of a parent of a child at St Mary's that 'all staff should be given a pay rise.' I also raised a number of concerns that we were receiving reports on the council's role in both adoption and fostering. I am concerned that in terms of scrutiny we scrutinise the work of the council but we are told by some officers (but not by the external national Improvement Service) that we cannot scrutinise the work of the non-statutory organisations which use public funds to provide these services.

There was a lot of interesting information in this agenda but I am clear that we need to find a much more effective way to scrutinise the work of the council.