Opinion: New Joint Scrutiny Committee Weakens Accountability

Published on: 26 Oct, 2025
Updated on: 28 Oct, 2025

By Jane Austin and Philip Brooker

leaders of the Conservative Group and chairs of the Overview and Scrutiny Committees at Waverley and Guildford Borough Councils

The decision to merge and reduce Guildford’s and Waverley’s scrutiny committees undermines accountability, sidelines independent voices, and weakens residents’ ability to hold local leadership to account.

The Lib Dem-led Executive can find staff for a new joint committee – but not to maintain proper scrutiny of its own decisions. That says it all.

This week, Waverley and Guildford Borough Councils voted to weaken its scrutiny structure despite clear opposition and against the recommendations of three scrutiny committees on both Councils, plus Waverley’s Standards Committee.

Scrutiny exists to act as a critical friend to those in power, holding the Executive to account on behalf of residents. Yet this vital function has just been diminished.

Under the new shared management arrangement between Waverley and Guildford Borough Councils, a joint committee is being created to oversee shared services – alongside a joint scrutiny committee. But rather than keeping Guildford and Waverley’s two scrutiny committees until the end of the financial year, the Executive pushed through its agenda to merge them into one, citing “workforce pressures” as justification.

This decision undermines accountability and risks eroding public trust. Guildford and Waverley’s residents deserve better.

Three of the four scrutiny committees examined the plan and voted to retain two committees, ensuring workload could be properly managed and accountability maintained. Both Executive’s nevertheless drove forward the proposal, ignoring those views entirely. It is telling that the same leadership can find workforce capacity to support a new joint committee yet claims they cannot do the same to maintain proper scrutiny of their own decisions.

It is equally telling that in a written answer at Guildford’s full council on 23rd October, the Executive admitted that only 40 per cent of the planned scrutiny reports at their Resources Committee came to the committee on the due date. For scrutiny to be effective, there must be something to scrutinise!

WBC Scrutiny Committee discussing 69 Godalming High Street on October 8

As chairs of Overview and Scrutiny, we see first-hand the vital work that scrutiny does. It provides a space where councillors from all parties can question decisions, challenge assumptions, and improve outcomes for residents. Yet scrutiny reports are regularly delayed or cancelled. Recommendations are routinely dismissed, ignored, or derided by those in power.

This is worrying behaviour for anyone who values open and accountable local government.

Over the past year, Waverley’s scrutiny committees have examined the council’s budget, questioned the management of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), investigated the financial drain of 69 High Street in Godalming, and raised serious concerns about the performance of the housing maintenance contractor.

Former M&Co Premises at 69 Godalming High Street. Google

At Guildford, Financial Monitoring is frequently scrutinised as is the Improvement Plan implemented in 2024 as a result of the disastrous financial performance of the council -leading to £multi-million overspends and declaring a “risk of bankruptcy”.

Additionally, the Weyside Urban Village Project “substantially worsened [the] financial forecast” and an investigation into the historical repair works of more than 8,000 items of work, paid for but not inspected in the housing maintenance division, and still ongoing, have been heard.

This is exactly the kind of work residents expect their councillors to do – asking difficult questions and demanding transparency.

The new single committee at Waverley will consist of six Liberal Democrats, three Farnham Residents, and three Conservatives. Due to political proportionality, independent councillors will have no representation. A seat that the Green/Aligned Independent group could not take up – and which could have gone to an independent councillor -was instead nominated to a Liberal Democrat.

For a leadership that often claims to value scrutiny, what we see is the opposite – our Executive’s safe space is to mark its own homework.

Guildford and Waverley residents deserve councils that welcomes challenge, not sideline it. At a time when joint leadership and shared services are reshaping how decisions are made, strong, independent scrutiny has never been more important.

This decision undermines accountability and risks eroding public trust. Guildford and Waverley’s residents deserve better.