A THIRD scrutiny committee will be set up to help bolster Powys County Council’s decision making accountability.

Under the new arrangements the three committee structures will replace the existing two with the Audit Committee allowed to concentrate on the council’s finances.

The senior salary for chairing the new committee  which is £8,700 on top of the £13,600 basic councillors’ salary has been approved by the Council Leader, Cllr Rosemarie Harris (Independent-Llangynidr).

This means that she loses part of the salary for a cabinet position.

Scrutiny committee members will also be part of small working  groups who will look at issues in depth between meeting dates.

Cllr Gwilym Williams, (Conservative, Disserth and Trecoed) who chairs the current Health, Care and Housing Scrutiny committee, said: “This has been ongoing for many months, the stumbling block has been finding the extra funding for the responsibility of chairing the committee.

“This will give us more capacity.”

Cllr Pete Roberts (Liberal Democrat – Llandrindod South) who chairs the current Learning, Skill and Economy Scrutiny Committee, said: “The workloads that the two committees have faced have been absolutely horeendous over the last eight months.

“As a result we have not been able to dedicate the time to all the areas we are meant to be looking at.

“This is a very positive move forward.”

But some had doubts.

Cllr Roger Williams, (Liberal Democrat – Felinfach) said: “My experience of local government and indeed other levels of government is that you will never be short of a committee.

“They tend to breed like rabbits and that’s no disrespect to rabbits.

“My concern about this is that it’s overcomplicated but I do believe we can make it work, because it is improving scrutiny.

“I’ve always thought that when you’re designing these sort of systems you need to use the KIS(S) principle, ‘keep it simple’ and I think this is too complex

“We need to think of the staff capacity to make this work.

“It’s the scrutiny committee that hold the cabinet to account.

“For those in opposition our ability to understand and influence cabinet is limited to scrutiny.”

The changes follow the Welsh Audit Offices (WAO) report , ‘Overview and Scrutiny, Fit For the Future?’

This highlighted weaknesses in the current scrutiny structure at Powys and gives advice on improvements.

The new arrangements will be:

  • Economy , Residents, Community and Governance
  • Health and Care
  • Learning, Skills and Culture
  • The Audit Committee, which has been used to scrutinise some topics, would concentrate on the finances and internal auditing of departments as well as looking at the annual report.
  • The Financial Scrutiny Panel (FSP) would be renamed the Finance Panel.

Council solicitor Clive Pinney said that the system can be reviewed after six months.