Calls made to give backbenchers more power to challenge council decisions

Nicholas Thomas, Local Democracy Reporter

Councillors should be given another chance to scrutinise local authority decisions if they feel there are “valid grounds for review” one representative has argued.

Cllr Brenda Miles said a rule change introduced last year weakened scrutiny committees’ power to challenge and ‘call in’ decisions, and should be reversed.

The Nelson councillor led a backbench committee’s resistance in 2025 to Caerphilly County Borough Council’s library closure proposals – but cabinet members pushed ahead with the plan anyway.

“My particular concern is where the cabinet takes a different view to scrutiny, and that has happened a couple of times,” she told the council’s corporate and regeneration committee, on Tuesday June 23.

“[If] cabinet chooses to take a different course of action, what should happen next is that the cabinet’s reasons for not following the recommendations from scrutiny should be published,” she said.

“Once those reasons are published, scrutiny should be able to challenge those reasons if there are grounds to do so – if they feel something was said or done in the cabinet meeting that led to that decision was actually incorrect, or there was information that should have been brought and wasn’t –  some valid and material reason why the people bringing the ‘call in’ would feel the cabinet might reach a different decision if they had more information available to them at the time.”

Cllr Colin Mann told committee colleagues he backed the reversal.

He said: “This clause, as it’s in the constitution at the moment, appears to be anti-democratic,

“We are supposed to be a democratic institution.”

But the committee chairman, Cllr Gary Johnston, questioned whether a change would achieve anything, if cabinet members still had the final say.

“I’m thinking of the committee when we had the discussion over [mothballing] Llancaiach Fawr, and I changed my mind from reading the report and hearing the debate in the room,” he said.

“We actually went against the report and asked the cabinet to keep it, and they decided not to. I don’t see how us bringing it back to the same scrutiny committee again… would have changed anything.”

Cllr Miles said if a scrutiny committee retained concerns about a cabinet decision, it could refer the matter to full council, “so taking the final decision away from the cabinet”.

Little interest

Another committee member, Cllr Marina Chacon-Dawson, said she had queried the proposal to change the ‘call in’ process in 2025, but there was little interest from others at the time.

“I hadn’t really appreciated at the meeting the significance of the rule”, replied Cllr Miles, adding she felt after challenging the library closures the new rule “was too restrictive”.

The council’s legal director and monitoring officer, Robert Tranter, told the committee he felt the 2025 change was “a good idea” that led to “more certain, clearer” decision-making.

“The scrutiny committee has before it a report that will go to cabinet,” he said. “[It] will debate that report, bring out any matters, and the cabinet will be made aware of the thoughts of scrutiny.

“My own view on this is I see little point, then, in having the ability to ‘call in’ that report once again, when the same committee has already thoroughly debated the report.”

He added: “The scrutiny committee should and ought to debate that report thoroughly when it has the opportunity, rather than having the ability to ‘call in’ the decision once again.”

Cllr Carl Thomas, a committee member, agreed and said he would not support Cllr Miles’ calls for a reversal of the rule change.

The committee voted 8-6 against Cllr Miles’ motion, with one member abstaining.