NORTH YORKSHIRE COUNCIL

14 FEBRUARY 2025

STATEMENT OF THE CHAIR OF SCRUTINY BOARD

Scrutiny Board brings together the Chairs of the six thematic overview and scrutiny committees at the Council and the Older People’s, Young People’s and Climate Change Champions.  It provides an opportunity for a whole council view of scrutiny activity, which avoids gaps and overlaps and helps establish a lead committee for areas of joint interest.  It also provides a forum in which the key performance issues for the Council can be reviewed and items for further scrutiny identified.

The scrutiny function was created to act as a check on and balance to the executive and it is a statutory requirement for all authorities operating executive arrangements.  There has been one meeting of Scrutiny Board since my last statement to Council.

The meeting of Scrutiny Board on 12 February 2025 focussed upon the scrutiny of the Executive Q3 Performance and Finance Management Report, ahead of the members of the Board attending the meeting of the Executive on Tuesday 18 February 2025. Some of the issues highlighted by members of the Scrutiny Board at their meeting are as summarised below:

· The level of satisfaction with our highways and whether more could be done to improve accessibility, with increased use of measures such as drop-curbs

· The challenges faced by the Council when migrating data and information from legacy systems

· How and where we share the wealth of economic activity and business data and information that we collect

· Recycling and composting rates and how our residual waste is managed, with a focus upon the energy from waste facility and the impact of shut-downs for maintenance upon landfill use

· The investigation into incidences of large-scale fly-tipping, prosecutions and whether we be able to recoup some or all of our costs arising out of the clean-up operations that are undertaken

· The action being taken to promote healthy weight amongst children and their families, particularly with regard to the promotion of active travel schemes such as cycle/walk to school

· Concerns about the average weekly costs for care home placements for over 65s and how this impacts upon their families

· The increase in the number of child protection plans and efforts to reduce the time that children spend in care

· Elective home education and the need to promote the mental wellbeing of children, reducing anxiety and so helping to support them in school.

Updates were also provided by the Older People’s Champion and the Young People’s Champion on key elements of their work over the past 3 months.  The themes covered by the updates included:

· Work to promote the portrayal of older people and ageing in a positive light and to tackle stereotypes

· Support for the ageing well programme, interventions and approaches, many of which are community-led

· The work undertaken by Healthy Schools, across 270 schools in the county, to encourage schools to adopt a holistic approach to health, focussed upon: activity; food; emotional health and wellbeing; and personal, social, and health education (PSHE)

· Support for carers and children and young people leaving care, including the recent review undertaken by the Children and Families overview and scrutiny committee of the motion referred from council regarding care experience.

Members of Scrutiny Board also reviewed the work programmes of the Area Committees, to help to ensure that opportunities for joint working and co-ordination of activity were identified.

Members of Scrutiny Board are next due to meet at 10am on Friday 23 May 2025.  At that meeting, the Executive Q4 Performance and Finance Management report will be scrutinised.

COUNCILLOR KARIN SEDGWICK

18 February 2025