The Audit Commission introduced the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) in 2002. It is a system for rating Local authorities in England (originally for single tier authorities then extended to district councils). It consisted of two main elements:
Corporate Assessment - an inspection of how the council operated
Service Assessment – a rating based on scores for inspections, performance indicators and service plans for the following services:
Education
Social Services
Environment
Housing
Benefits
Libraries and Leisure
Use of resources
The scores for each of these blocks would then be used to calculate an overall rating of excellent, good, fair, weak or poor.
The methodology has been developed over the past four years and as a result some of the rules have changed and some new ones have been introduced.
The service scores have been refreshed every year, in December, to include the most recent data. For most Authorities, except where an inspection was requested, Corporate Assessment score remained in place between 2002 and 2005.
Extensive changes for the assessment framework were introduced in the Audit Commission’s document, ‘The Harder Test’
A programme for all Corporate Assessments based on a more demanding set of measures has been set up. All authorities will be reassessed between 2005 -2008.
The introduction of the Joint Area Review as an inspection of Children’s Services. This is carried out at the same time as the Corporate Assessment
Major changes have been made to the Service assessment. There are a decreasing number of inspections which are still current (they are valid for up to three years). Therefore there is to be an increasing use of Performance Indicator Data which are being phased in over three years
An annual ‘Direction of Travel’ assessment is now published for each authority by Audit Commission Relationship Managers
The use of resources assessment is now more demanding and attracts greater weight in the overall score
Given these changes, the Audit Commission acknowledged that while an aim of the CPA was to encourage continuous improvement score in 2006 was not directly comparable to the scores first published in 2002. It is now a ‘harder test’. Therefore, they changed the ratings from “excellent to poor” to “0 to 4 stars”
View the CPA
Hounslow Corporate Assessment 2006 (
PDF Help, size 242kb)
Hounslow Youth Offending Service report ( PDF Help, size 248kb)
Hounslow Youth Service Report ( PDF Help, size 78kb)
Hounslow Services for Children and Young People report ( PDF Help, size 378kb)
For more information on the CPA in Hounslow, please email ppu@hounslow.gov.uk.