The CPA framework has been a key improvement tool for Plymouth City Council over the last five years. In 2003 it was classified as a poor council following a critical corporate assessment inspection which led the council to agree a recovery plan with central government. The council has since improved a number of its services but the overall CPA rating has remained rated at 2-star for the last four years.
During 2002/03, the council was significantly short of management capacity, with no permanent chief executive and a transitional corporate management team. Staff morale and customer satisfaction were both low. The corporate assessment identified Plymouth as one of the worst councils in the country. This provided the jolt that was needed. With the CPA framework acting as the key driver, the council started a programme of fundamentally reviewing how it operated and what it wanted to achieve. It moved away from employing interim managers and in early 2004, appointed a new permanent chief executive. At the same time, the council's children's services received a 0-star rating, which led to the political leaders agreeing cross-party priorities focused on the safeguarding of children, balancing the budget and also on long-term waste management solutions.
Through the appointment of a new director of children's services, the chief executive stabilised the senior management team and using improvement resources from central government, employed more middle managers. With this increased capacity, the council planned a wholesale review of all of its services, together with the introduction of a new performance management system combining service and financial monitoring. Integral to this was greater self awareness, benchmarking and learning from inspection reports, from good practice in Audit Commission national reports, and from visiting 4-star councils.
Key outcomes generated include:
- the opening of six new schools
- improved educational attainment and child protection
- the regeneration of Devonport
- more affordable housing
- improvements in waste recycling
The city centre was also regenerated with a new shopping centre and by enabling local shops to help self-manage the city centre through the City Centre Company. The council is also improving its cultural services, particularly with the local Respect Festival. In addition, it has improved the management of its finances and its approach to risk management.
During this period, the council's political leadership changed, but because of the cross-party consensus in place on key improvement event areas, the focus on improvement was not diverted. The sustained focus on improvement together with stable managerial leadership, were the key factors in maintaining progress. The council also helped to generate greater trust and shared ownership with local partners and also reconfigured its local strategic partnership.
Throughout CPA the council had good relations with the Audit Commission and other inspectorates and welcomed the advice and support it received. It valued the critical friend challenge provided by the local audit team, because it helped managers remain focused. It also learned from inspections and found the publication of key lines of enquiry particularly helpful it used the CPA methodology to judge how well it was improving and the increases in service assessment scores were motivational for staff. However, the council felt overburdened by regulation in the past. In one year it received 14 inspections or assessments from a variety of different regulators and agencies.
However, the council has recently become frustrated by the CPA scoring rules. The last corporate assessment in 2006, recognised that the council was progressing significantly but that it may be some time before the effectiveness of its new initiatives can be judged. However, because it was selected for a corporate assessment early in the CPA programme, the council did not have another one before the introduction of the CAA assessment framework. The council felt disadvantaged by this, because despite the increases in service assessments and direction of travel assessments in the last two years, it stayed at 2 stars for the remainder of CPA.