Fire and rescue
The Audit Commission's work in fire and rescue
Through our assessment and audit work, we helped to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of England's 46 fire and rescue services.
We appoint auditors who carry out audits of fire and rescue authorities and report annually on their findings. Information about our approach to audit and annual audit letters can be found in our audit regime pages.
We carried out assessments of fire and rescue services under the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) from 2005 to 2009.
Find out more about CPA for fire and rescue services.
In April 2009 we replaced CPA with the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). As part of CAA, we carried out organisational assessments of fire and rescue services. Through our area assessment, we also assessed their contribution to partnership working to deliver local priorities and improve outcomes for local people. CAA ended in May 2010.
Our Oneplace website set out the results of CAA area and organisational assessments.
We have played a significant role in developing and using performance information to help local public services improve for many years. Our performance information pages set out information about the approach we took and what we learnt from our work. We continue to provide analysis and improvement tools to help local public services measure, compare and improve their performance and costs. This includes our fire and rescue authority value for money profiles
In the past, the Audit Commission published a series of national reports on fire and rescue services. Our reports were based on independent, authoritative analysis of national evidence and local practice and helped to improve the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of local public services.
We also produced a fire and rescue services briefing. This briefing captured key messages from the Commission's former research in this area, and provides links to relevant national publications, case studies and tools.