Comprehensive Area Assessment

Following the Government commitment in the Coalition Agreement to cut local government inspection and abolish the Comprehensive Area Assessment the Audit Commission has wrote to all councils on 28 May explaining how it proposes to bring work on CAA to a conclusion. It said ..

“All work on updating the area assessment and organisational assessment will cease with immediate effect. These assessments on the Oneplace website will not now be updated. We will not be reporting new red or green flags in the area assessment nor updating the text around existing flags.

"We will not be issuing new scores for the use of resources assessments, the managing performance assessments or the overall organisational assessments.

"Ofsted has a statutory obligation to carry out an annual assessment of children’s services. Pending any further decisions Ofsted will continue with the children’s services assessment for 2010.

"The Care Quality Commission is currently considering the implications of the ending of CAA for its assessment of adult social care with the Department of Health. They will also discuss the matter with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and communicate with councils as soon as this is finalised.”

This represents an immediate result for the LGA Group’s Freedom to Lead campaign launched in Autumn ’09. The LGA is continuing to campaign for further reductions in the inspection burden facing councils and is also seeking a radical reduction in the weight of data returns councils have to submit to local government.

Comprehensive Area Assessment was introduced in April 2009, replacing Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA).

The assessment involved two key elements:

• An area wide assessment assessing the extent to which councils and their local partners are likely to deliver their priority outcomes and
• An organisational assessment looking at the way councils manage their performance and how effective they are in use of resources.

The first set of assessments was reported in December 2010 and are available on the Oneplace website.

The introduction of CAA was an ambitious change. It was intended to provide an area and outcomes focussed assessment, put the views of local people at the heart of the assessment and reduce the burden of assessment on councils and their partners.

LGA closely monitored the first year of CAA – inviting feedback from council leaders and undertaking structured surveys with all councils. Our evaluation report set out a series of recommendations for change in year 2. 

Our recommendations were largely accepted by the inspectorates who committed to a number of changes in year 2:

•  Improve joint working across inspectorates;
•  Make more effective use of elected member peers
•  Ensure much greater engagement of Councillors in CAA
•  Use the baseline of the first year assessments to ensure future work is risk-based and proportionate;
•  Reduce the administrative impact of CAA, and in particular carry out a significant review of the approach to use of resources;
•  Stagger work with district councils in year 2 to help ensure that they can more effectively engage in the process;
•  Improve the transparency of joint judgements and emerging findings; and
•  Promote a greater focus on learning and improvement to ensure Oneplace adds value for the public and that the assessments add value for local public services.