Local Service Board Scrutiny: why it matters

A new scrutiny performance panel has been set up to look at the work of Swansea’s Local Service Board.

 The Local Service Board is responsible for tackling some of the major problems that impact on the citizens of Swansea, including domestic abuse, adult qualifications, economic inactivity, debt, preventable early deaths, life expectancy, older people’s independence. This is just a selection of the 21 priorities that the Local Service Board has targeted, so there is an awful lot of work to be done.

Swansea Local Service Board includes Swansea’s main public service providers as well as representatives of the voluntary and business sectors and  a representative of the Welsh Government. Its purpose is to make sure that decision makers work together to tackle the issues that matter for Swansea. It has two main roles:

• It aims to make Swansea a better place by leading the development and delivery of the One Swansea Plan. This is a strategic role which means making the delivery of services simpler and ensuring that everyone is working towards the same agreed priorities.

• It acts as a problem solver and aims to tackle a small number of service delivery issues. These are typically issues where there is a high number of providers and where citizens may find services confusing and difficult to access. These are also issues which are important to the community but which have proved difficult to resolve.

It is essential that the Local Service Board is subject to the same level of scrutiny as all other aspects of the Council’s work. The aim of the Panel will be to see how much of a difference the Local Service Board is actually making to the well-being of the people who live and work in Swansea. Partnership working on this scale takes a lot of time and effort and relies on  goodwill from participating organisations, so the Panel hopes to be able to support and assist this important work by acting as a critical friend and helping to make improvements to the way things are done. 

The next meeting of the Panel will take place on 21 July and members of the public are welcome to attend. Please contact the Scrutiny Team for details  scrutiny@swansea.gov.uk or 01792 636292