Final score: The impact of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment of local government 2002-08 looks back over seven years of local government assessment and inspection.
The report considers the extent to which CPA helped councils improve their governance, finances and services for local people, and finds that on the whole councils got better year on year during CPA, although CPA was only one element in a wider system.
Between 2002 and 2008:
- excellence increased, with 42 per cent of councils judged to be in the highest category of performance by 2008; an increase from 15 per cent in the first year
- weak performance became rare, with no council receiving a zero star rating in 2008 and only 4 at the next level, compared with 34 councils rated as 'weak' or 'poor' in 2002.
Each council will have had its own unique experience of improvement under CPA. Here we set out twelve councils' stories.