Today the Environment & Communities Overview & Scrutiny Board met to discuss their work plan for the year. This is perhaps the board with the widest brief so it was crucial for them to narrow down their priorities to just a few topics. To help they had these presentations from the Corporate Directors for Environment […]
How Can We Be Better Corporate Parents?
June 4, 2010 by 1 Comment
According to the Who Cares Trust about 75,000 children are in care in the UK. They also provide a sobering list of statistics about the life chances of those in care compared with those who are not. So, for example: Only 13% of children in care obtain five good GCSEs – compared with 62% of […]
Our Surveys Said
June 2, 2010 by 1 Comment
We have run a couple of surveys recently to get an idea of what topics people thought should be looked at by the overview and scrutiny boards. The first survey was through Swansea Voices – the Council’s citizen’s panel. We had 85 suggestions back from this. The second survey was an internal survey of staff and councillors and we […]
Introducing the r-Board
May 28, 2010 by 2 Comments
To coincide with the launch of the i-pad today I’d like to reveal our own piece of state of the art technology: the r-Board. Let me tell you about this very important piece of kit. The r-Board helps us keep track of the reviews that the overview & scrutiny boards are working on. It goes like this: […]
Workplan Time for the Government and Us
May 25, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Today the government has announced the bills it intends to bring to parliament in the Queen’s Speech. This list of 22 bills is in effect the government’s workplan for the next parliamentary session. Over the next three or four weeks all of the Council’s Overview & Scrutiny Boards will also be meeting to decide what their […]
New Ways of Making a Difference
May 21, 2010 by 2 Comments
Over the last 12 months one cross party group of councillors has been showing how overview & scrutiny really can make a difference. The Child & Family Services Overview & Scrutiny Board was set up in April 2009 following a CSSIW Report into children’s services in Swansea. It has been chaired by Cllr Mark Child with support from the […]