Ten questions to ask if you're writing a scrutiny report #3: What are our recommendations?

Your recommendations should be at the heart of your report.  The document should be designed around them.

Very few scrutiny reports are structured to support recommendations. In many reports, the recommendations are attached, almost as an afterthought, at the end. In others, recommendations are hard to find.  Indeed, it’s possible to find reports that contain no recommendations at all.

Confusion still surrounds the whole question of recommending.  We all recite the SMART mantra, but how many of the recommendations in our reports truly meet the criteria?

Let’s remind ourselves that our recommendations should be:

Specific – not vague or general

Measurable – how will we know whether the recommendation has been carried out, or how successful it has been?

Agreed – what’s the point of recommending an action that nobody will agree to implement?

Realistic – are the resources available?  Is the willingness available?

Time-bound – when is anyone going to check that the recommendation has been carried out?

Take a look at some of these recommendations, drawn from a random sample of reports.  How many of these are truly smart?

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The Panel recommends empowerment of communities to participate in the regeneration of their own areas.

The Panel recommends a preference towards regeneration as opposed to demolition.

The review group recommends that active consideration be given to whether the Council should (a) extend its direct delivery of adult and community learning (b) develop its co-ordinating role as a partnership ‘hub’.

Continued emphasis on cross-agency working needs to be ensured through the Community Safety Partnership.

More encouragement is needed within the community to try and improve environmental education, particularly within the schools.

Stronger links should be made with the Safer Neighbourhood Teams to try and get them to put more emphasis on some of the environmental enforcement issues.

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From our point of view - writing the report, rather than doing the scrutiny – the wording of the recommendations is critical.  If we think carefully about the way we express the recommendation, we are probably going to create a ‘smarter’ recommendation.  All of these words and phrases betray recommendations that are not specific or measurable.

empowerment

a preference towards…

…active consideration should be given…

…continued emphasis…

…needs to be ensured…

…more encouragement is needed…

…to improve environmental education…

…stronger links should be made…

…get them to put more emphasis…

 

Key questions for our recommendations must include the following.

■   Does your recommendation answer the question you have asked?

■   Does it align with your hypothesis?

■   How would you know that the recommendation has been carried out?

■   How will you monitor or check implementation or progress of your recommendation?

 

Hot tip

Limit the number of recommendations you make.

More is not necessarily better.  A few sound recommendations are more likely to be carried out than a long list of vague, well-meaning intentions.

In the next posting, I'll address the question: 'What's the evidence?'

If you like what you see here, you might like to contact me to discuss working with you.  I am currently working with one of the scrutiny team of a major local assembly in the UK.  I run training courses, and coach individual writers.  I can even give you some feedback on the reports your team is producing, if you want nothing more.  Go to my website to take a look at a sample training programme.