Comprehensive Performance Assessment

Publication of Assessment Scores

In December 2005 the Audit Commission published, for the fourth time, 'Comprehensive Performance Assessment' scores for Single Tier and County Councils across the Country.

Bexley Council was identified as a 'four star' authority and obtained top marks in the new rating system, following three years as 'excellent', which means the Council can continue to take advantage of greater freedom in the way it operates and allocates funding. Find out more about the 2005 CPA...

More about the CPA

Comprehensive Performance Assessments for all local authorities were introduced by the Government through the Local Government White Paper 'Strong Local Leadership - Quality Public Services'. The intention was that the Audit Commission will carry out a detailed assessment of every English authority's performance, building on existing audit information, inspections and assessments. This Comprehensive Performance Assessment provided a judgment on performance and proven capacity for improvement. This process has now been modified; the new framework is called CPA the harder test.

The CPA programme of work was in three parts:

A Corporate assessment by the authority, which will look at the political and managerial effectiveness of the council.
A Service assessment, checking inspection and performance results.
A Direction of Travel statement.

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Corporate Assessment

The self-assessment document (pdf format 216kB) was prepared in Spring 2002 and sets out the context in which the Council operates and answers four key questions:

What is the council trying to achieve?
How has the council set about delivering its priorities?
What has the council achieved/not achieved to date?
In the light of what the Council has learned to date, what does it plan to do next?

Each council was also required to produce a three-year action plan that will be put in place as a result of the assessment. The action plan should help deliver long-term service improvement and also address the council's key priorities. Bexley's CPA Action Plan has now been updated and included in the Council's Performance Plan.

The Audit Commission's inspection team were in Bexley in 2002/03 and included representatives from the following organisations:

A managing inspector from the Audit Commission
A Best Value inspector from the Audit Commission
A district auditor/audit manager
2 individuals with local authority experience, one of which will be a Councillor

The inspection team spent 2 weeks on site and asked staff and some of the council's partners for evidence to ensure that account is taken of what local people think about their council and the services they use. The Council's next Corporate Assessment is scheduled to take place between October 2006 and February 2007.

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Inspection and Performance

At the same time as their inspection, the Audit Commission analysed a wide range of information about the quality and performance of Bexley services over the last 3 years. This included looking at the results of external inspections such as those by Ofsted, performance indicators and customer satisfaction surveys. This has now been replaced by CPA service scores.

At the end of the whole process a judgment was made about how well the Council had done and to what extent it has the capacity to improve. Corporate and service performance information was then summarised in a 'balanced scorecard' that was made available to the public. This graded each council as 'excellent', 'good', 'fair', 'weak', or 'poor'. These ratings have now been modified under CPA the harder test to 4 stars, 3 stars, 2 stars, 1 star and 0 stars.

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Direction of Travel Statments

In 2005 the government introduced a Direction of Travel statement. This statement indicates the progress being made towards achieving improvement.

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CPA Update

The classification of 'four stars' on the harder test has shown that the Council continues to deliver a high standard of service to residents and also offers values for money.

The Audit Commission has updated the 2005 scores for all single tier and county councils across the country.