CHANGES to boost scrutiny provision including a third committee, are a step closer but putting them into operation will be delayed by a couple of months ,until next year.

It had been expected that the recommendations would be discussed and voted on at next week's full council meeting, but this is now not the case.

Council solicitor, Clive Pinney, told members of the Democratic Services Committee that a decision had been taken to put their recommendations in front of a full council in January.

This is to allow councillors to have a members' day when they will be given an explanation on the new arrangements in an "informal" setting.

But this could also give members time to tweak recommendations again as acting chief executive, Dr Mohammed Mehmet, is reviewing the council structure and senior management.

This means that some areas within the three committees could change once his review is published.

The meeting to come up with the proposals follows the Welsh Audit Offices (WAO) report , Overview and Scrutiny, Fit For the Future?

This highlights weaknesses in the current scrutiny structure at Powys and gives advice on improvements.

Changes from recommendations that were brought forward from the Scrutiny Development Board will see committees made up of a total of 14 members rather than the nine that had been recommended.

Cllr David Price argued for the increase in numbers and believed that lowering the numbers at committees to nine would mean the "same people" would be doing all the work.

Cllr Price said: "There needs to be opportunities for people to turn up to meetings.

"If you're going to have nine on a committee, six or seven will turn up regularly and you will have the same three or four doing every working group."

His move was backed by Cllr Kathryn Silk as a "bit of a safety net".

Working groups, despite opposition by Cllr Roger Williams, have been re-instated.

Cllr Williams believed that having working groups breaking out to look in-depth at topics would "fracture the cohesion" of a scrutiny committee.

But it was felt that working groups would give councillors a better chance of looking in-depth at issues.

Cllr Linda Corfield said: "The only way to find out if there's a problem is by speaking to people at the coalface. They can be more candid in front of small groups and you can be more blunt when asking questions."

"They can be really useful."

To the current structure a third committee will now be recommended.

Economy , Residents, Community and Governance

Health and Care

Learning, Skills and Culture

The Audit Committee, which has been used to scrutinise some topics, would concentrate on the finances and internal auditing of departments as well as looking at the annual report.

The Financial Scrutiny Panel (FSP) would be renamed the Finance Panel.

When asked by Cllr Dai Davies how a third scrutiny chair would be funded Clive Pinney replied that the issue of a third scrutiny chair being given "senior salary" had been resolved with the money released.

Mr Pinney explained that all senior salaries  (cabinet posts and chairs of committees) will be subject to a review by the next annual meeting in May 2019.

Recommendations also include the scrutiny committees being in cycles of six weeks, with only a maximum of two working groups to delve into subjects.