01 August 2008
Direction-of-travel statements will no longer be applied to council performance under plans for a radically simplified and streamlined version of the new inspection framework for local services, announced on July 29.
The statements, a feature of the current Comprehensive Performance Assessments, indicate whether a local authority is improving strongly, well or not at all. They were set to continue as a major feature of Comprehensive Area Assessments, which are due to replace the CPA in April 2009.
But the consultation paper issued by the Audit Commission and six other public service watchdogs reveal a major reworking of the architecture of the CAA.
Another element of the original conception of the CAA – a report of performance against 198 national indicators – has also been dropped. Instead, national indicator data will feed into and inform the new assessment. The CAA will consist of just two elements. The first is an organisational assessment, examining the functions of a specific body, made up of its 'use of resources', and 'managing performance' judgements.
A second assessment will examine the performance of services across a locality. This was originally dubbed the 'area risk assessment' but has been renamed the 'area assessment' after the word 'risk' was judged to have too many negative connotations.
Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred told Public Finance the inspectors had listened to the feedback from the first consultation exercise and learned from the findings from the CAA trial sites.
'I hope the CAA will be much easier to understand. I don't think it will be any easier to deliver but it's a framework which is simpler in its design, and that emphasises the point that this is intended to be much less of a burden on local bodies than the existing frameworks it replaces,' he said.
Results for both judgements will be presented on a website jointly hosted by all nine inspectorates involved. A system of green and red flags will alert people to areas of good and bad practice.
Bundred said the aim was to make CAA scores more accessible and meaningful to the general public. 'One of the things which is true of the CPA is, while it undoubtedly made a contribution to the improvement in local government in the past few years, it didn't really resonate with the general public. We want [the CAA] to do so,' he said.
The consultation is also considering how the organisational assessment is to be reported. One option is to report whether an organisation is performing 'poorly', 'adequately', 'well' or 'excellently'. Another would be to have no overall performance score but to report the 'use of resources' and 'managing performance' scores separately.
PFaug2008
