Audit Commission - Comprehensive area assessment

CAA is the new framework through which the major public service inspectorates will together make independent assessments of how well people are being served by their local public services. Its focus is primarily on the prospects for better outcomes locally rather than the internal workings of individual organisations.

Many important priorities such as tackling the causes of ill-health, improving the local economy and reducing carbon emissions, require public bodies to work effectively together and with their communities. This in turn requires a joined up assessment framework – CAA.

2. Which inspectorates are involved?

The inspectorates responsible for delivering CAA are: the Audit Commission; the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI); the Healthcare Commission; HM Inspectorate of Constabulary; HM Inspectorate of Prisons; HM Inspectorate of Probation; and the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).

3. What benefits will CAA bring?

Provide citizens, service users and tax payers with clear and impartial information on how well they are being served by their local public services;

Identify barriers to improvement in outcomes and value for money, so that action to deliver better results can be targeted on the right things;

Reduce the cost and administrative impact of inspection and assessment, ensuring resources can focus on front line services.

CAA should therefore contribute to better value for public money and better results for local people.

4. How is CAA different from the old system for assessing councils, CPA?

CPA was an assessment of councils. CAA is a cross-inspectorate approach to looking at how well people are served by all their local public services, not just councils. CAA will focus on:

Areas not just organisations

Likelihood of future delivery not just performance in the past

Outcomes for communities and in particular, those most in need, rather than outputs and process

Local priorities as well as national targets

5. Why change to CAA?

It is widely acknowledged that CPA and other performance assessments have played a part in driving improvement for councils and fire and rescue services. However, we recognise all such frameworks need to move on to reflect wider developments and to provide a stimulus to innovation.

CAA is a totally different approach involving seven inspectorates. CAA will reduce the assessment and inspection burden on organisations and their partners as it is a more streamlined approach to assessment. We are replacing a whole raft of performance assessments such as direction of travel scores, star ratings and corporate assessments with a more forward looking assessment of the outcomes for a particular area and an assessment of each organisation’s effectiveness.

CAA also reflects the new relationships between central government and local partnerships which have developed under new Local Area Agreements (LAAs). LAAs focus on better outcomes and recognise that priorities vary significantly from place to place. In this context, the current focus of inspectorates in assessing individual services and organisations will no longer be sufficient.

6. How will CAA reduce the inspection burden on our services?

In CAA, the inspectorates will make maximum use of the performance management information that local public services use to self-assess and manage those services (including information on the satisfaction of local people with their locality and the public services they experience).

There will be far fewer major programmes of intensive inspection and all inspection will be based on risk, with national rolling programmes of inspection limited to very few services that are inherently high risk (such as one covering children in care and safeguarding vulnerable children). As far as possible, CAA will be carried out ‘in the background’ to keep any disruption to local service organisations to a minimum.

There will be fewer assessment reports overall and the work of the inspectorates will be jointly planned and coordinated more.

The Government has set a target of a 30% reduction in the cost of most inspection and regulation by 2009. Taking this joined up approach will help to maximise our impact and minimise duplication; this will help us meet these targets together.

7. How does CAA relate to other performance assessment frameworks?

CAA covers all local services in which councils, working on their own or in partnership with others, are involved. Other services also have performance frameworks through which they are accountable. For example, the police have the Assessment of Policing and Community Safety, and local healthcare organisations currently have an Annual Health Check. Ofsted is consulting on its new programme of inspection for children in care and safeguarding shortly. Ofsted will consult with stakeholders at the same time on its arrangements for contributing to CAA, including the assessment of services for children and young people and adult learners.

The CAA partner inspectorates have been working closely together and with government departments to ensure these frameworks complement each other and avoid duplication. The inspectorates will make sure that they share information that relates to more than one framework to help keep information demands on local services to a minimum and to deliver joined up assessments for each area.

8. What does CAA aim to achieve?

CAA aims to contribute to better value for public money and better results for local people. These things can only be delivered by effective local services working effectively in partnership and with their communities. CAA’s role is to enhance the accountability of those services to local people by providing clear and impartial information on how well they are being served and how that compares with elsewhere. The pressure for improvement provided by such public reporting has been demonstrated in previous assessment frameworks.

With around £180 billion of public money spent on providing local public services each year, CAA is an important part of independently assessing and reporting on how well this money is spent and making sure that local public bodies are accountable to the public for service quality and impact.

9. What difference will CAA make to individuals?

CAA information will help people to hold their elected representatives and public bodies to account, and make the most of their opportunities to influence local decisions. Looking at local concerns and priorities and focusing on outcomes, the CAA process will cover a wide range of issues such as the strength of the local economy, availability of affordable housing, children’s well-being, how safe people feel, support for individuals to improve their health, provision for the vulnerable, and the quality of the local environment. It will build on the work of seven inspectorates to put all this valuable information in the hands of taxpayers, service users and citizens.

10. What difference will CAA make to where I live?

Inspection regimes such as CPA have helped drive improvements in local government and CAA will build on its success. With councils and their partners being expected to play a broader role in leading their communities as they tackle challenges such as supporting the development of the local economy, responding to the needs of the rapidly increasing proportion of older people, improving environmental sustainability, tackling climate change and reducing crime and inequalities, there is a need for a new assessment methodology that takes into account this new role.

Increasingly, citizens expect direct access to information about local services. CAA will provide independent assessment information to strengthen the ability of people to challenge and influence how services are provided and improved. The resources available to tackle this broader agenda are under increasing pressure, making the search for efficiencies more critical than ever.

11. How will you communicate information about CAA to the public?

We will use a variety of ways to report our findings from CAA and will the use the web as a key channel. A prototype web reporting tool has been developed as part of the consultation to demonstrate how a new website might give local people access to independent information on how well they are being served by local public services, how this compares with elsewhere, and the prospects for improvement in priority outcomes.

We are committed to using the most up-to-date information available to base our assessments on and are working to ensure that we can update information as quickly as possible. The trialling will help us understand what is practical.

12. How will you communicate to those who do not have internet access?

Web reporting will not be our only method of making information about their local areas available to local people. We are currently exploring other options for communicating this information to local communities and will work with organisations to identify the most trusted and effective ways to deliver information to local people.

13. How will you know that CAA really works in practice?

This next phase of consultation is about more than the consultation document; we are trialling these proposals at ten sites across the country to test them in ‘real life’ situations and make sure that they work for the people that will actually be part of the process in the future.

The ten sites working with us to trial the latest set of proposals will have a unique opportunity to help shape and refine the final CAA framework. We will make further adjustments in light of their experience.

14. Where is the trialling taking place?

15. How have the public been involved in the development of CAA?

We have run a series of groups through Ipsos Mori to engage people who use services and other citizens in the development of CAA and will continue to do so as we develop and implement the framework. We are particularly keen to understand the needs of people whose circumstances make them vulnerable and those in hard to reach groups.

In addition to this we have done a significant amount of partner consultation with local pubic bodies, the third sector and stakeholder groups to ensure that their views are reflected in the final CAA framework.

16. How can the public get involved in further developing CAA?

The public has been involved in consultation to date, of which the Ipsos Mori groups are an integral part. We will continue to find meaningful ways for the public to get involved in CAA as it develops over the coming months. Our work with Ipsos Mori and the focus groups has helped us understand public attitudes to CAA. As we develop CAA we will be working with local organisations to find the best ways to communicate the results in meaningful ways to the public.

17. What should organisations be doing to prepare for CAA?

Organisations should focus on working together to deliver better outcomes and be producing information for their own purposes – not for the benefit of the inspectorates. Organisations will not need to prepare for CAA in the same way that they used to for Joint Area Reviews or Corporate Assessments. Honest self assessment is an important part of an effective performance management system for any organisation, and the inspectorates will make maximum use of this type of information in making the CAA assessments.

18. What changes have been made following the first joint consultation in November 2007?

We have listened to the feedback to the first joint consultation on CAA and developed these proposals based on those comments. The main changes we have made in response are to simplify the four key elements of CAA as set out in the first joint consultation into two elements: an area assessment, and an organisational assessment which will combine the use of resources themes and a managing performance theme. We have also incorporated more effectively the use of the National Indicator Set.

19. What are the component parts of CAA?

CAA is composed of two basic components – We now propose to take a simpler approach, combining the original proposals into:

an area assessment; and

organisational assessments for councils and fire and rescue services, which will combine the use of resources themes and a managing performance theme. Use of resources assessments for primary care trusts and police authorities will contribute to the separate performance frameworks for the National Health Service and police authorities, respectively.

20. What is an ‘organisational assessment’?

Organisational assessments will combine the use of resources and other performance assessment into a combined assessment of organisational effectiveness, helping ensure that local public bodies are accountable to the public for their quality and impact.

For councils and fire and rescue services, organisational assessments will combine use of resources and managing performance themes into a combined assessment of organisational effectiveness.

For fire and rescue services the managing performance theme will be tailored to reflect the specific performance and service delivery priorities within the sector and will draw on the peer review of operational assessment of service delivery. Other local public services will have other forms of organisational assessment, although primary care trusts and police authorities will have also have a use of resources assessment as part of this.

21. What is ‘area assessment’?

An area assessment really does mean just that – it is a joint judgement on outcomes in a specific area, not a direct assessment of the local strategic partnership, a council or any other local service body. A key aim of CAA is to provide a sharper focus on the accountability of partners for their contribution to improved outcomes whilst reducing the level of detailed inspection of individual services.

22. How will the area assessment work?

The area assessment will focus on three main questions:

How well do local priorities express community needs and aspirations?

How well are the outcomes and improvements needed being delivered?

What are the prospects for future improvements?

23. How will services be scored?

Where there are significant issues arising from our area assessment, we will use red and green flags to indicate this. A ‘red flag’ will indicate that significant concerns about outcomes or performance and future prospects are not being adequately addressed. ‘Green flags’ will indicate where others may have something to learn from innovative or exceptional practice in the area. They will represent more than the ‘good’ performance or steady improvement that will be expected everywhere. It is quite possible that an area assessment will include no red or green flags in a particular year.

To provide a balanced overview, we will include a short account of any issues that are important locally and nationally, whether or not they are subject to ‘red’ or ‘green flags’.

24. What does a red flag mean?

A ‘red flag’ will indicate that outcomes and/or performance and prospects for sustained improvement in local priorities are inadequate, for example, because:

performance is poor, slipping or not improving;

service or outcome standards are unacceptable;

improvement is not on track to achieve a target;

locally agreed priorities do not reflect evident and pressing need;

insufficient account is being taken of inequality;

insufficient account is being taken of people whose circumstances make them vulnerable or who are at risk of avoidable harm; or

capacity and/or capability of partners is inadequate, and/or not enough is being done to meet impending and future challenges.

If a red flag is awarded, it means that different or further action will be needed to ensure the required improvement is achieved.

25. If organisations disagree with your rating, what can they do about it? Can they appeal or complain?

Organisations and partnerships will be able to challenge red flags and this will be done through a formal procedure. Details of how any challenge can be made will be published later. However the non-awarding of green flags will not be able to be challenged. Green flags will highlight exceptional success and innovation to help spread learning rather than reflecting a formal assessment judgement.

26. How many green flags will an organisation be able to get?

There will not be a pre-determined number of green flags; we will use them to highlight innovation and notable practice. Green flags are not a score. They have been developed to highlight innovation and notable practice, and to help us provide a balanced picture that does not just focus on negative issues. They will not act as an alternative to a star rating.

27. How can you say CAA will make public bodies more accountable and comparable when there are no longer star ratings to make this clear?

Our system of green and red flags, supported by robust judgements for organisational assessments and area assessments and drawing on the experience of joint inspectorate activity, will ensure improved accountability for the public bodies that CAA relates to. Individual organisations will be scored through the various forms of organisational assessment in each sector which will take full account of the organisation’s contribution to local outcomes.

28. When is it being implemented?

CAA is to be introduced in April 2009, with first reports published in November 2009. The first year will start to build a baseline against which future progress can be tracked. Of course, we are not starting from scratch and existing assessments will be an important source of information to start from.

Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) FAQs

1. What is CAA?