The Overview and Scrutiny Committee of Lambeth Council met on Thursday 1 October 2026 to discuss the renewal of the IEG4 digital customer platform and a review of the council's scrutiny function. The committee resolved to make recommendations regarding the IEG4 platform renewal rather than referring the decision back to the Cabinet Member, and approved a series of recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the council's scrutiny function.

IEG4 Digital Customer Platform Renewal

The committee considered a call-in request regarding the decision to renew the IEG4 digital customer platform contract for two years. Councillor Matthew Bryant, a signatory to the call-in, argued that the existing platform had provided inadequate service, citing examples of issues with parking permits and the planning portal. He expressed surprise that the contract renewal was approved retrospectively and suggested a shorter extension to allow for a thorough review involving councillors and residents.

Councillor Natalie Kane, Deputy Leader for Inclusion, Democracy and Culture, responded that the issues raised by Councillor Bryant related to other systems and not the IEG4 platform itself. She explained that IEG4 is a core part of the council's digital infrastructure, supporting high-volume services like Council Tax and Benefits. She stated that the proposed two-year renewal was a controlled bridge to allow for a wider customer services review and technology roadmap, and that further delay would increase the risk of service interruption and additional costs.

Following extensive discussion, the committee voted to resolve not to refer the decision back to the decision-maker but to make recommendations. These recommendations included establishing a working group with councillor involvement to provide feedback on the resident experience, developing a framework for residents to report issues with webpages and forms, clarifying the division of responsibilities between IEG4 and the council's front-end interface, and creating an action plan with a shorter timeframe to address non-software issues within the council's control to improve user experience.

Scrutiny Review Report and Action Plan

The committee also reviewed a report on the council's scrutiny function, which followed a Corporate Peer Challenge and a review by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA). The report identified 20 recommendations for improvement.

Councillor Danial Adilypour, Chair of the committee, welcomed the report and highlighted the need for clarity on the timeline for implementing recommendations, a requirement for written explanations when papers are submitted late, and a clear process for the cabinet to respond to scrutiny recommendations. He also stressed the importance of regular meetings between committee chairs and the cabinet to embed pre-decision scrutiny.

Further discussion from committee members focused on various aspects of the review, including the potential overlap between cabinet committees and scrutiny, managing political point-scoring within scrutiny, the criteria for using the call-in process, and the timeliness of report submissions. Officers provided clarification on the proposed cabinet committee structure, the existing call-in procedures, and the challenges related to report production capacity.

The committee agreed on a set of recommendations to be made to the Deputy Leader of the Council. These included: confirmation of the timeline for implementing all recommendations in the action plan; immediate implementation of a requirement for written explanations when papers are not submitted by the deadline, with a suggested extension of the deadline to ten days; immediate implementation of a recommendation for scrutiny recommendations to be formally reported to the next cabinet meeting, with a requirement for cabinet to respond within two months; providing the committee with a draft version of the executive scrutiny protocol for feedback; and establishing a bi-monthly cycle of meetings between committee chairs and the cabinet to discuss work programmes and embed pre-scrutiny. Additional recommendations were made regarding ensuring disagreements remain productive, prioritising questions from committee members over other councillors, encouraging cameras to be on during online meetings, and clarifying the division of responsibilities between IEG4 and the council's front-end interface. The committee also discussed the potential for mandated training for all councillors on the role of scrutiny and the establishment of one commission per year as a benchmark, though a formal recommendation on commissions was not made at this time.