Overview and Scrutiny

The purpose of the formal Overview and Scrutiny Committees at Nottingham City Council is to work to contribute to policy development and ensure that the Council’s Executive (and certain other partners) are held to account publicly for their decisions and actions.

All councillors who are not members of the Executive may be appointed to one of the Council’s Scrutiny Committees, which have a wide remit to explore how the Council and its partners could improve services for the people of Nottingham.

Scrutiny Committees are councillor-led and cross-party, conducting their business in a politically impartial manner. Councillors gather evidence at Scrutiny Committee meetings and, when that evidence shows there could be a better way of doing things, they can make recommendations for change.

However, Scrutiny Committees cannot make decisions or overturn the decisions of others. Instead, they aim to support improvement in the Council’s decision-making and related processes.

For further information, please see Article 11 (Overview and Scrutiny) of the Council’s Constitution.

• Article 11 (Overview and Scrutiny)

The Council has set up five Scrutiny Committees, connected to the Priorities of Our Council Plan 2025-29:

• The Children and Adults Scrutiny Committee to focus on matters concerning children’s services, adult social care, safeguarding, commissioning and education.
• The Corporate Scrutiny Committee to focus on matters concerning performance and communications, finance, procurement, IT, human resources, equality, diversity & inclusion, improvement and transformation, and customer access.
• The Health Scrutiny Committee to focus on the delivery of the Council’s statutory Health Overview and Scrutiny function, including matters concerning public health.
• The Homes, Economy and Infrastructure Scrutiny Committee to focus on matters concerning housing, homelessness, skills, economic development, employment, flood risk, property, planning, regeneration, highways, traffic and transport.
• The People, Communities and Environment Scrutiny Committee to focus on matters concerning community protection, community services, tourism, culture, resident services, environmental health, waste and cleansing, district heating, green spaces and carbon neutrality.

All Scrutiny Committee meetings are held in public so that Nottingham people can attend them freely to listen to the discussions.

Scrutiny Committees cannot investigate individual complaints about Council services. However, information from local people about their needs, experiences and concerns in relation to Council services helps Scrutiny Committees in gaining a wider impression of service quality overall.

If you have any experience that you would like to share with a Scrutiny Committee, particularly if it is in relation to an upcoming item on the Committee’s work programme (available through the individual Committee links, above), Please contact: constitutional.services@nottinghamcity.gov.uk.