17 June 2005
The tough new Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime unveiled this week will cost some councils their 'excellent' or 'good' status – but its Audit Commission architects are unrepentant.
The second incarnation of the CPA for top-tier authorities has a stronger focus on service-users and value for money, and requires councils to meet even higher standards to achieve the same rating. There was little comfort for authorities that are marked down.
Since the CPA was introduced in 2002, council performance has improved, with almost 70% of authorities now classed as 'good' or 'excellent', but the commission said the pressure needed to be kept up on local government.
Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred said: 'It will be the case that some local authorities are improving but not at the same rate as the sector as a whole, and will slip back. It is important we raise inspection criteria because the CPA should be a powerful driver of service improvement. We make no apology for that.'
But commission chair James Strachan stressed that the new CPA criteria had been drawn up in partnership with councils. 'A genuine two-way dialogue has taken place,' he said.
Councils said they were ready to face up to the new test. Simon Milton, chair of the Local Government Association's improvement board, said: 'Local government remains committed to continuous improvement and will continue to rise to the challenge presented by the Audit Commission through its harder CPA.'
The Audit Commission hailed the new framework, published on July 15, as more sophisticated than its predecessor.
The five performance categories of 'excellent', 'good', 'fair', 'weak' and 'poor' remain but will be enhanced by an annual 'direction of travel' assessment. Councils will be judged to have made either significant improvement, some improvement, no improvement or to be weakening.
A new 'use of resources' judgement will assess the quality of a council's financial reporting and controls and, from 2006, will place a special emphasis on value for money. A council will only be rated 'excellent' if it can also demonstrate it is providing value for money.
Other aspects of the old CPA will persist. A corporate assessment will still be made and individual service assessments will continue to feed into the process, but will rely more on performance indicators submitted by the council than on external inspections.
Bundred said: 'We're not asking local authorities to collect additional data for the purpose of the CPA. It should be data they are already collecting and using for their own management purposes.'
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