Policy and performance

The annual Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) is applied to all councils to give them a rating. The rating given triggers greater financial and procedural freedoms for good performers and greater inspection, regulation or even loss of control over services for weaker councils.

The assessment process is managed by the Audit Commission (www.audit-commission.gov.uk) in partnership with other inspectors and groups of peer assessors.

The performance assessment approach

The performance assessment looks at both the quality of current services and the council's ability to improve:

• its corporate capacity and performance,
• individual services,
  
  - education
  - social care
  - benefits
  - housing
  - environment
  - leisure and libraries.
  - use of resources (including property and money).
  

There are five elements to the process:

• Assessment of the corporate capacity of the council through firstly a self assessment exercise then an on site inspection.
• Gathering of service-specific performance information already in the public domain, e.g. performance indicators, inspection scores, scores for statutory plans.
• Targeted inspection to fill gaps in information.
• The allocation of numerical scores for all services, ranging from one (poor) to four (good).
• The weighting of the scores.

The combined results give the council an overall category rating on the following scale:

• Excellent
• Good
• Fair
• Weak
• Poor

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