The Overview and Scrutiny Committee can investigate, influence, report and recommend ways to strengthen policies, improve services, ensure best value for money and secure long-lasting positive benefits for local people.
Effective scrutiny arrangements are an essential component of local democracy, enhancing accountability and transparency of decision making and enabling local councillors to represent the views of their constituents. These arrangements have been established to enable local councillors, on behalf of their communities, to scrutinise and challenge the Cabinet and the Mayor and to consider matters of strategic importance to residents within the North of Tyne area with a view to influencing their decisions.
Although the Committee does not have the power to make or block any decisions of the Combined Authority, it does have the power to ‘call-in’ decisions and delay their implementation in order to make a case for them to be formally reconsidered or changed, oblige the Combined Authority to respond to its recommendations publicly within two months and require any member (or officer) of the Combined Authority to appear before it to give evidence.
Delegated Decisions | Forward Plan of Key Decisions | [papers]Overview and Scrutiny Papers[/papers]