Agenda item

To receive any comments from the Chair of the Combined Authority’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

The Chair advised that the Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee had submitted comments for consideration at this meeting, following on from their committee meeting held on 17 June. The comments had been circulated in advance of the meeting and were available to view on the Combined Authority web site.

Cllr Stephen Clarke, the Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee then presented the comments and highlighted the following points:

a. Regional Economic Recovery Taskforce (as referenced at agenda item 11):

Members had welcomed the update on the Taskforce - in order to assist their scrutiny role and keep them informed, members requested that the minutes of Taskforce meetings were shared.  On the wider issue of the role of the Taskforce, members urged the Combined Authority Mayor and the political leaders of all the West of England authorities to work together on the regional recovery to deliver the outcomes residents and businesses need.

b. Update to the Constitution (agenda item 12)

Members had noted that under the Combined Authority governance model, the number of formal decision-taking committee meetings was being reduced to 4 per year. Members felt it was essential to enhance the role of scrutiny moving forwards to help ensure public accountability around the Combined Authority’s decision taking.  To that end, the committee was intending to strengthen their role, particularly in relation to the current sub-groups which mirrored the WECA Boards (Transport; Planning and Housing; Business; and Skills).  In terms of the accessibility of regional Board meetings, it was felt that appropriate adjustments should be made so that all or part of these meetings (e.g. the Transport Board) were held in public.

c. Climate emergency planning update (agenda item 22)

Back in January, scrutiny members had expressed disappointment about the apparent lack of pace and urgency in taking forward the regional climate emergency work. The Climate Emergency was declared in July last year, but the Action Plan was now delayed until October. The committee acknowledged that the Covid-19 recovery planning and climate emergency planning must be linked but felt that insufficient progress had been made on this.  Members also felt that their previous comments had been largely ignored - in January, the committee had recommended that a new Climate Emergency Board comprised of Cabinet leads should be established and had raised the issue that the £250k allocated to support regional climate emergency action was inadequate.  The committee would welcome the opportunity for the Combined Authority Mayor to attend one of their meetings to discuss this and other issues.

In response to a question from Cllr Romero about where he saw the issue of climate emergency being scrutinised, Cllr Clarke commented that he understood that under the constitutional changes proposed at this meeting, scrutiny had been given a specific role in relation to monitoring how the region met its climate emergency commitments; however, he was concerned about whether the committee had the expertise and the resources to be able to do this effectively; a Climate Emergency Board, utilising expert views where required was the appropriate way to monitor progress at the regional level.

d. Quality assurance of reports and local consultation, with specific reference to agenda item 19 - West of England Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan

He drew attention to concerns included in the written scrutiny comments, as had also been highlighted in some of the public forum statements earlier at this meeting.