04 April 2003
The Comprehensive Performance Assessment system is to undergo major reform before the next round of full local government inspections in three years' time.
The framework and methodology used by the Audit Commission to rank authorities' performance will be the subject of extensive review, which will continue until the end of this year.
The current system of inspections was introduced at breakneck speed a year ago, but now it is to be overhauled.
Local government director David Prince said the next set of CPA tables, due in 2006, would reflect authorities' success in tackling cross-cutting issues and working with other agencies, such as health bodies and local strategic partnerships.
One of the main tasks will be to decide how to quantify and assess these relationships. Prince confirmed that the current emphasis on service performance scores would be reviewed, as would the weightings of the service blocks, and even the categories used to grade authorities' performance.
'We shall be focused very much on how councils impact on their communities. That does require us to develop a more holistic approach than in the first round of the CPA,' he said.
Details of the review were published in a consultation paper on April 3. It also outlined proposals for annual improvement reports to be produced between now and 2006, which will determine whether councils move up a category.
The commission has put forward two options for consultation, both of which would require evidence of a 'significant and measurable improvement in service scores' across a range of service blocks before an authority could move up a category.
Commission chair James Strachan rejected suggestions that the proposals would encourage a 'tick-box' approach among councils keen to improve their rating.
'CPA is not a crude aggregation of performance indicators, which is how I would characterise inspection in large parts of the public sector,' he said.
But the initial response from Local Government Association chair Sir Jeremy Beecham was lukewarm. 'These proposals risk leaving some councils languishing with poor scores that fail to reflect their improved performance,' he said.
'Stability must not become stagnation. If the motivation factor is lost then everything is lost and we would be left asking ourselves what is the point of the CPA process. The key must be flexibility and fairness.'
The consultation will run until May 22.
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