Agenda item

The Service Manager for Scrutiny and Democratic Services presented the Panel with a draft 2021/22 Covid Recovery Scrutiny Panel Workplan and emphasised the fact that the Panel’s remit had now shifted to recovery as opposed to the initial ‘response’ to the Covid pandemic back in 2020.

Members acknowledged that the Workplan needed to remain flexible in light of the ever changing national picture regarding recovery from the pandemic and to enable Members to swiftly respond to changing situations as they arose.

The Panel had expressed their desire to speak to local businesses and the voluntary sector, one year on, to have insight into how people and organisations were coping in the current, ever evolving, Covid landscape and to see what support might be available from the Council to assist with any transition or growth.  It was suggested that this ‘informative two-way session’ might be better served in a more informal environment through a Working Group as opposed to a formal Panel meeting.  Members agreed with this course of action.

The Scrutiny Research Officer also suggested that a form of questionnaire could be circulated to local businesses to get some feedback in relation to their recovery experiences.  It was also mooted that an exercise to evaluate what other local authorities were doing to aid recovery for their local economies would be useful to the Panel’s future deliberations.

The Director of Legal and Governance (and Monitoring Officer) advised the Panel that the Local Government Associations (LGA) has arranged a visit, albeit virtually, to the Council during December 2021 to enable Peer Members and Chief Executives to ascertain how the Council had been planning for Covid recovery, what had already been done and how this compared to other local authorities.

It was hoped that the work of the Covid Scrutiny Panel would be demonstrated to the LGA Peer Group and once the visit was completed, the LGA were intending to give reflection and feedback on what had been ascertained and also offer some pointers for future direction.  It would therefore be useful to schedule an item for a future meeting of this Panel to enable officers to report the outcomes from the LGA to Members.

Additionally, Members were informed that the Sports and Leisure Management Group (SLM and ‘Everyone Active’) who had just taken over management of the Council’s leisure contract for the next 10 years, had recently given a presentation to management in relation to their focus on health and leisure recovery following the pandemic.

The presentation was inspirational and had charted attendance levels throughout the pandemic and outlined the organisation’s aspirational community programmes which included activities for children, food programmes and support for mental health.  It would again be useful for the Panel to receive a similar presentation from them at some point during the next 12 months to gain further understanding of their work and to continue to forge good working relationships with the Council’s leisure providers in respect of post-Covid recovery.

RESOLVED

that the following Covid Recovery Scrutiny Panel Workplan for 2021/22 be approved: