Issue - meetings

This report invites the Audit and Scrutiny Committee to consider the call-in of a decision made by the Community and Wellbeing Committee, under Agenda Item No 4 “Options for the Future of the Museum” at its meeting on 13th January 2026. The call-in has been made in accordance with the procedures set out in Annex 4.6 – Overview, Audit and Scrutiny (including Call-in Procedure and Councillor Calls for Action) of the council’s Operating Framework.

The Committee considered a report that invited the Audit and Scrutiny Committee to consider the call-in of a decision made by the Community and Wellbeing Committee, under Agenda Item No 4 “Options for the Future of the Museum” at its meeting on 13th January 2026. The call-in had been made in accordance with the procedures set out in Annex 4.6 – Overview, Audit and Scrutiny (including Call-in Procedure and Councillor Calls for Action) of the Council’s Operating Framework.

The following matters were considered:

a)    Councillor Alex Coley was given three minutes to address the committee as the main councillor requesting the call-in.  He stated that there were missing reports from the Community and Wellbeing agenda which were pertinent to the decision and therefore the committee did not make their decision with all the relevant information. He had been told that the reports would be published with the agenda pack but instead there were highlights from them within the main report.  He was also surprised that there was no mention of the two reports in the Audit & Scrutiny Committee report being discussed tonight. He spoke about the confusion and mixed messaging about the closure or potential closure of the museum, the exclusion of stewardship and governance questions and recharge costs that might not reflect the true cost of running the museum. He therefore called upon the Audit & Scrutiny Committee to request that the decision be taken again and the missing reports be circulated to enable a fully informed decision.  The missing reports were the Bourne Hall Museum Service Review (May 2025) and the Epsom & Ewell Borough Council Culture Peer Challenge (August 2025).

b)    Councillor James Lawrence had requested to speak to this item and was also given three minutes to address the Committee.  He claimed that this was part of a broader issue with failure to resource the committee system properly and cited an urgent decision as an example where decisions had been taken at committees without the full information. The report author was quoted as acknowledging, with hindsight, to the Community & Wellbeing Committee that they should have had the whole document rather than the executive summary. Councillor Lawrence went on to say that as the two reports were missing from the agenda today that Audit & Scrutiny Committee did not have adequate information to know whether the decision taken at Community & Wellbeing Committee was correct and therefore encouraged the decision of Audit & Scrutiny Committee to recommend withdrawal of the original decision and for Community & Wellbeing Committee to reconsider the entire item with the missing reports as part of the agenda pack.

c)    Councillor Clive Woodbridge, as Chair for the Community & Wellbeing Committee was given three minutes to address the Committee.  He stated that the Community & Wellbeing Committee had had a good discussion on this item and was given all the relevant information from both missing reports.  They were excluded from the agenda pack, and an executive decision format was used to help council members, so they didn’t have to wade through  ...  view the full minutes text for item 41