Changes to Caerphilly County Borough Council meetings will improve scrutiny after the nation’s auditor found shortcomings, its backers believe.

New arrangements will allow more direct challenges to the council leader, and will also mean the end of a third-sector liaison committee.

Councillors will now be able to ask a total of six questions to the local authority leader at monthly meetings – previously they were limited to two.

The leader will also appear before the council’s three main scrutiny committees once each year to answer members’ questions.

“These proposals will strengthen the accountability of the leader to the scrutiny committees,” said Cllr Jamie Pritchard, the council leader, at a meeting on Tuesday May 19.

“It’s not lost on me that we’ve been criticised by Wales’ audit office”, he added, referring to a 2025 Audit Wales report which found “confusion” over the scrutiny process and its impact “limited”.

Cllr Nigel Dix, who leads the independents in the council chamber, said each political group should be guaranteed a question at monthly meetings.

He said he was concerned members of the ruling Labour group would instead use the policy to ask “softball” questions of the leader.

Under the new proposals, the questions will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

There were concerns, too, that a move to scrap the council’s voluntary sector liaison committee would “reduce accountability”.

Plaid Cymru councillor Judith Pritchard called it “an attack on democratic processes” and said “the new arrangements, which will be a closed forum… won’t be subject to any scrutiny from outside, and people won’t know what’s going on”.

Cllr Kevin Etheridge, an independent, warned abolishing the committee was “an erosion of democracy”, but councillors did not back his motion to save it.

In reply, senior officer Kath Peters said the arrangements had “changed significantly” since the voluntary sector liaison committee was set up in 1996, and “since the pandemic… the forum has struggled for agendas and focus, so membership has reduced”.

“It almost feels like it’s come to the end of its time,” she said. “We think the collaborative forum would be a better use of everybody’s time.”

Stephen Tiley, chief executive of GAVO (Gwent Association of Voluntary Organisations), said the committee “doesn’t always have the buy-in from the partners, which has been a challenge”.

Responding to concerns about accountability, he added: “I can honestly say that in all the conversations, it has actually been trying to enhance the voluntary sector voice.”

Instead of the committee, Cllr Teresa Heron has been appointed the authority’s voluntary sector ‘champion’ and will maintain links between groups and the council.