Tameside councillor to challenge former leader to be panel chair?

A VETERAN Tameside councillor may challenge its former leader to become head of a key scrutiny panel.

The Correspondent revealed Cllr Brenda Warrington was being lined up to take charge of the children’s services group.

But it is now understood Cllr Peter Robinson is looking to take the seat.

The Hyde Newton representative sits on the panel and his apparent interest is being seen as a key test of executive leader, Cllr Gerald Cooney.

If he does put himself forward, along with Cllr Warrington, members of the ruling Labour group are set to vote on their preference.

Whoever replaces Cllr Teresa Smith, who is now executive member for children’s services, faces a tough job after withering findings of government-appointed commissioner Andy Couldrick into the department, which is rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted.

Chief executive Sandra Stewart questioned the evidential basis for claims of a ‘toxic’ and ‘bullying’ working environment – even though he will now be in place for three years.

And her verdict on how the scrutiny panel does its job was also a warning.

Responding to a question from Cllr Jacqueline Owen of ‘What can we do?’, she said: “Some of the things I’ve come across in the report is there is a real view that Tameside is very critical but not necessarily supportive or challenging.

“It’s about how do you recognise the good work while at the same time asking those questions in a supportive way as to why is that area not as good and what does that mean?

“It might be we need to put more resources into something, rather than expecting people to just work harder or flog themselves on something.

“What would be really good as a scrutiny panel is how we can ensure you’re fully briefed, so you’re able to hold people to challenge.

“If it was the bins, we’d be all over it, whereas this is one of those areas where it can be quite complex at times and we’ve not always necessarily – and I include myself in that – been so involved and understanding of it.

“So that’s what we’ve got to do. Rather than being critical, we need to be supportive and challenging.

“That’s what you see in the report – we’re not always challenging enough about some performance or understanding of it, why it’s not good and what we can do to improve it.”

Improvements in how the panel analyses data – and an apparent lack of focus on certain areas – was also brought up to Cllr Andrew McLaren.

Sandra Stewart added: “What needs to happen is that somebody presents it to explain where things are good and where things are that we need to be looking at and the right questions to be asking.

“I’ve spoken before about support that should be given to scrutiny.

“Clearly, what our plan should be is, ‘We don’t need an improvement board, but we need something that holds the system to account and looks at those sorts of things.’

“That should be scrutiny.

“What we need to move towards is we don’t need to have an improvement board because that role is undertaken by scrutiny going forwards.

“That’s one of the challenges when you’ve a service that’s in a difficult state. There are so many areas in which people are expecting improvement, sometimes your priority and focus is thinly spread.”