Agenda item

The Chairman praised Liz Penny, the Democratic Services Officer that had supported the Working Group, for producing such a great report on a review that had faced significant challenges.  The Vice Chairman advised that the review had been a non event where the chief witness, the London Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC), had refused to engage in terms of attendance at meetings or providing written answers to questions.  The Working Group's findings suggested that the CRC had not been working as well as anticipated and problems had been identified with the service provision nationally. 

It was noted that the Vice Chairman had attended a workshop set up by a Select Committee that had been looking into the effectiveness of local government scrutiny.  This review had highlighted the inability of scrutiny committees to hold external organisations to account in terms of there being no legislative requirement or enforcement.  The Select Committee determined that councils needed to be able to 'follow the pound'.  Its report and recommendations had been passed to Government for a response. 

The Vice Chairman advised that the Working Group had not been able to conclude that the London CRC was not working effectively as representatives had not attended any of the meetings.  However, it was suspected that the London CRC had not been working as well as anticipated and the report recommended that Cabinet engage with the NPS, HM Inspector of Probation and the Ministry of Justice to highlight the lack of engagement and the Council's inability to hold the body to account.  It was hoped that additional powers would be afforded to local government scrutiny committees to enable them to scrutinise those external organisations that delivered public services.

The Chairman acknowledged that this had been an interesting review which had highlighted the need to scrutinise the work of publicly funded organisations on behalf of residents.  It was important to have an effective non-custodial system where prison was an absolute last resort.  The report highlighted the value of what could be done by local authority scrutiny and provided a good example of detailed local work that could be clearly translated to other areas.  It was noted that other organisations had expressed an interest in this review and the Working Group's findings. 

The Committee was advised that the Working Group had been unable to conclude that the London CRC was not doing its job.  However, after some discussion amongst Members of the Working Group when reviewing the draft final report, it had been agreed to strengthen the wording.  As the London CRC had not engaged in the review, the report could not be overly critical or conclusive and there was no information or evidence to support this.  It was thought that, if the experience of other councils was not dissimilar, it was likely that action would be taken by the appropriate authorities to resolve the issue. 

The Chairman thanked those Members, officers and external witnesses that had been involved in the review. 

RESOLVED: That the Community Sentencing Working Group final report be agreed and forwarded to Cabinet.