CAA Watch - monitoring the implementation of CAA

The survey was conducted by the Local Government Association’s Analysis and Research team and aimed to capture authorities’ views on how CAA was being implemented on the ground and the extent to which the ambition in the final CAA framework document was being realised in practice. The findings from this report have been used by the LGA to make recommendations about how CAA should be implemented in year 2 and can be viewed in the LGA report ‘CAA evaluation – a sector perspective year 1’.

The survey was sent to all CAA leads of local authorities in England between 26 October and 4 December 2009 and received 175 responses; a response rate of 50 per cent. A breakdown of response rate by council type and region is shown in the main report.

Some of the key findings are summarised below:

• Just over half agreed that CAA has focused on the highest priorities; 22 per cent disagreed.
• Over two-thirds agreed that that they were satisfied with the level of engagement with auditors but only half agreed that auditors and CAA leads had liaised closely.
• Over three-fifths agreed that auditors kept them regularly informed about their thinking throughout the use of resources assessment; 63 per cent said that they found the ‘use of resources’ assessment more burdensome than in previous years. 
• The majority (68 per cent) had either undertaken a self-assessment or intended to undertake a self-assessment; 22 per cent of these felt that it was an implied requirement of the Inspectorates and 3 per cent said that Inspectorates had specifically requested it.
• 46 per cent disagreed with the statement Inspectorates have planned and coordinated activity better, to manage the impact on local organisations and services; although 59 per cent agreed that Inspectorates have shown flexibility to fit arrangements around local ways of working and events.
• Two-thirds agreed that CAA leads provided sufficient levels of engagement and kept them regularly informed them about Inspectorate thinking.
• Just over two-fifths of counties and shire districts agreed that the CAA lead had discussed an approach to engagement with representatives of county and district LSPs; a quarter disagreed.
• 73 per cent agreed that the area assessment was reported against local priorities and 65 per cent agreed that the reporting was balanced and provided an overview of the positive and negative.
• Four-fifths said that they had done extra work to respond to CAA that they would not have done to manage their own performance, and two-thirds disagreed that the burden of inspection was being reduced as a consequence of CAA.
• Over two-fifths said that compared to CPA, at this similar stage in the CAA process their authority was spending more time on inspection-related activity, 23 per cent said that they were spending about the same and 25 per cent said that they were spending less time on inspection-related activity.
• Three-quarters agreed that the LAA process needs to be reformed in order to provide greater opportunity for LAAs to reflect local priorities as opposed to national ones.
• Nine in ten agreed that the sector still needs to make further progress in reducing the burden of data returns to central government. 

CAA Watch: monitoring the implementation of CAA - Report (PDF, 42 pages, 1084KB)

Contact: jonathan.evans@lga.gov.uk

Telephone: 020 7664 3217

Date: Jan 2010