Falkirk Council: Plans to merge committees to streamline decision making

Starting after next year’s summer recess, Falkirk Council’s executive will merge with the education, children & young people executive.

Members of Falkirk Council approved the change at a recent meeting, when they also agreed that the council’s two scrutiny committees should also be brought together at the same time.

Currently there is an external scrutiny committee which oversees council spending on outside organisations and an Internal scrutiny committee which looks at how the council itself is performing.

While the executive is usually led by the leader of the administration, the scrutiny role goes to a member of the opposition.

The changes will mean that both the executive and the scrutiny committees will increase from 12 members to 15.

This will allow all 30 members of the Council to serve on one body or the other.

Members of the education executive who are not councillors, including a parent representative and a care-experienced member, will still be invited to attend meetings when relevant items are on the agenda.

The council leader, Councillor Cecil Meiklejohn, said that the aim was to “streamline the decision-making process without losing accountability”.

Another change agreed was for more notice to be given of amendments, which will allow groups to discuss them before the meeting.

With the latest meeting of Falkirk Council lasting for a full day and a half, members were keen to find ways to make meetings run more smoothly.

A series of proposals were made by a working group of councillors and officers.

In addition to the proposed changes, the Labour group and Independent councillor Laura Murtagh both asked for a change that would give councillors got more time to read papers before a meeting.

Labour councillor Siobhan Paterson said: “I make no secret that being a mother of two young children and balancing shifts in social care jobs, as well as my councillor duties, can feel like an impossible task.

“This can be made all the more difficult when we are presented with papers that can be seven, eight, 900 pages long that we need to properly digest before we can come to any proper decision.”

Independent councillor Laura Murtagh was also keen to make sure that councillors have more time to digest and research papers before making decisions.

But other councillors felt that officers having to prepare papers ten days in advance, rather than seven, would have a knock-on effect on reports being prepared for earlier meetings, so the suggestion was rejected.

Councillor Murtagh – who left the SNP group earlier this year – also asked for a change that would ensure members of political parties who do not agree with their group get a chance to state their case.

She said she was trying to be “philosophical and theoretical here rather than give real-time political examples” but added, “Do feel free to use your imagination”.

Her amendment to allow members to speak individually when necessary was accepted.