Hello, something slightly different today. I wanted to share some initial thinking with you about what it means to be a 21st Century Scrutineer and see if it resonates with you.

As you might know, over the last couple of years I’ve been working with Catherine Mangan and Catherine Needham to research what it means to be a 21st Century Public Servant and a 21st Century Councillor, given the new challenges facing public services and democracy.

You can find that work here, in case you are not familiar.

And now, in conversation with the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny, we are thinking about scrutineers and the officers who support them.

First, let’s take stock of the new challenges:

• Perma-austerity has deepened with sustained underfunding of public services and scrutiny has not been immune from this.
• Complexity of place has intensified, through combined authorities and integrated care systems, alongside local government reorganisation.
• Communities are in distress, moving from the pandemic straight into the cost-of-living crisis.
• Incivility in public life has grown with rising issues of abuse and harassment for councillors in particular.
• The rising profile of equality, diversity and inclusion alongside counter claims about the ‘woke agenda’.
• The increase in remote and hybrid working since the pandemic.

Specific to democracy, Dr Catherine Howe, has also highlighted:

• The networked citizen. The expectations of many citizens have changed - they expect transparency, to be listened to, to access data and to be able to act.
• New governance. Decision making is changing. Less project management and more agile, decision making is more fluid and responsive.

In response we think scrutiny is changing in two main ways:

1. Scrutineers and their support officers are relational workers. Already with limited formal powers, effective scrutiny depends less on what happens in the committee room and more on the work to build relationships that happens outside. Whether with the executive, with partners or with citizens, it is the relational work that makes the difference. Councillors are, of course, already familiar with working with limited authority and using ‘soft power’ to get things done.
2. Scrutineers and their support officers are system thinkers. With a history of looking at cross-cutting issues, scrutiny is, more than ever, dealing with complexity, both in terms of the issues being addressed and the structures being navigated. Scrutiny itself is increasingly systemic with local council scrutineers working within a multi-level and cross-organisational ‘web of accountability’.

In this table we show what we think are the main changes from Scrutiny 1.0 to 21st Century Scrutiny.

Over the next few months, we will be researching these issues further so let us know whether this resonates with you. Do you agree that the role is changing? Perhaps you already working as a 21st Century Scrutineer or know others who are?

Please reply direct to this email if you have any thoughts.

As usual, I've also posted this on LinkedIn here where you can add/see any comments.

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