Crime and disorder scrutiny

Section 19 of the Police and Justice Act 2006 requires every local authority to have a crime and disorder committee with the power to review or scrutinise decisions made or other action taken in connection with the discharge by the responsible authorities of their crime and disorder functions. The Crime and Disorder (Overview and Scrutiny) Regulations 2009 complement these provisions and the Home Office has produced guidance.

The legislation does not require councils to alter existing committee structures. The Isle of Wight Council has decided that the Scrutiny Panel for Health & Community Wellbeing should undertake the Crime and Disorder Committee role.


Role of the Crime & Disorder Committee

The committee is expected to scrutinise the work of the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP) and the partners who comprise it, insofar as their activities relate to the partnership itself. This supports a focus based on policy and finding solutions. Focusing on policy:
  • gives the partners the reassurance that the committee is there to ensure that the CDRP is accountable and its performance is improved, rather than just ‘having a go’ at the partners;
  • emphasises the fact that scrutiny is focused on improvement, on enhancing the performance of existing services, and on a constructive examination of the
priorities of the CDRP; and
  • means that there is wider scope for the committee, or group of members

At a basic level, the role of the committee is to:
  • consider Councillor Calls for Action relating to crime and disorder that arise through the council’s existing CCfA process
  • consider actions undertaken by the responsible authorities on the CDRP
  • make reports or recommendations to the local authority with regard to
those functions. In practice, the nature of the committee and its work should mean that recommendations will be directly for responsible partners as well.

The regulations do not specify the frequency of the committee meetings but they should be at least once a year. The Home Office guidance suggests that if a local authority decides to undertake “set piece” community safety scrutiny only once a year, this annual meeting could be in the form of an event looking at crime and disorder matters and discussing which crime and disorder matters should be considered in the next municipal year as matters of local concern.

In addition, the scrutiny function should consider community safety issues more consistently throughout the year. Scrutiny functions and partners should work together to come up with local solutions, which might form a combination of formal meetings, informal ‘task and finish’ groups, or other methods of evidence gathering and public involvement.

The Committee can request information from the CDRP and the CDRP is under a duty to provide it.


Key areas for scrutiny
  • Policy development – in-depth reviews focused on a specific topic relevant locally.
  • Contribution to the development of strategies – if the CDRP is putting together a strategy, plan or policy it may be useful to build in a process for scrutiny at draft stage.
  • Holding to account at formal hearings – questioning representatives of the CDRP about their roles, responsibilities and activities.
  • Performance management – examining the performance of the CDRP (ideally ‘by exception’, highlighting both particularly good and poor performance to identify lessons to be learned etc).

Co-option

The regulations allow crime and disorder scrutiny committees to co-opt additional members to serve on the committee. These co-optees can be specialists in particular areas and can bring great value and expertise to the committee’s work. Co-optees must be an employee, officer or member of a responsible authority or of a co-operating person or body but not a member of the executive of the local authority. The committee can decide whether they should have the right to vote. Membership can be limited to membership in respect of certain issues only. The council should take care to clarify the role of such a co-optee, who may be expected, as part of the committee, to hold his or her own organisation to account. Any co-option should be in accordance with the council’s existing co-option scheme. There is also a general power to include additional non voting members under section 21(10) LGA and paragraph 5 of Schedule 8 to the Police Justice Act.



Page last updated on: 08/03/2011