21 October 2005
Star ratings for councils coupled with 'direction of travel' statements are to replace descriptive labels when the new Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime is rolled out later this year.
The Audit Commission last week published The harder test, the second incarnation of the CPA for top-tier authorities, following a consultation period. This will replace the five performance categories of excellent, good, fair, weak and poor with ratings from zero to four stars.
Councils will also be assessed on whether they are improving strongly, well or adequately; not improving adequately or not improving.
The direction of travel statements will serve as the main indicator of how a council is performing and will come first in the description, so a council might be described as improving strongly and three star or improving adequately and two star.
Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred said the change would provide greater clarity.
'Even excellent councils are not excellent in every single respect, nor is every poor council poor in every respect, so there is some confusion for the public,' he told Public Finance.
'We've received strong representation from local government on this. It [would be] difficult to explain to the public that this is a new, harder test if the old labels still applied, and we had a lot of sympathy with that view.'
But Bundred refused to be drawn on how many councils might be downgraded as a result of the new inspection regime, as it will be examining aspects of a council's performance that have not been measured before.
He added: 'There are no quotas for how many authorities will be in each category. No one will be more pleased than I if most of local government passes this test.'
The Local Government Association, however, maintained that the new system would lead to some councils being downgraded.
LGA chair Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart said: 'People in some areas will be at a loss as to why their council has been downgraded when the services they receive are improving.'
But he added that the introduction of direction of travel statements would give councils a much better overview of how they were performing.
PFoct2005
