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ITEM EX21

EXECUTIVE - 10 DECEMBER 2002

COMPREHENSIVE PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT- ACTION PLAN

Report by Director for Strategy

Background

  1. Members will be aware that this year the Government has initiated a comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) for all county and unitary councils. This assessment process has been carried out by the Audit Commission, in conjunction with Ofsted, Social Services Inspectorate, Best Value Inspectorate, Fire Service Inspectorate and District Audit.

  2. The process has involved a corporate assessment, which was carried out in May and examined nine areas of performance:
    • What is the council trying to achieve?
      • Ambition
      • Focus
      • Prioritisation
    • How has the Council set about delivering its priorities?
      • Capacity
      • Performance management
    • What has the Council achieved/ not achieved to date?
      • Achievement
      • Investment
    • In the light of what has been learnt, what does the Council plan to do next?
      • Learning
      • Future plans

  1. This corporate assessment is scored and combined with the assessments from various service inspections to give an overall rating for the Council. This rating will be announced by the Audit Commission on 12 December and will feature five categories of performance (excellent, good, fair, poor and weak).

  2. Members will be aware of the service inspection ratings, which have been reported at various times over the last 2 years. This report concentrates on the corporate assessment.

    3. Corporate Assessment

  3. The Audit Commission’s corporate assessment report will be published on 12 December. It contains a range of recommendations for improvement many of which the Council has already implemented or is well on the way to tackling. There are three broad areas for improvement:
    • Forward Planning - last year’s Oxfordshire Plan process was truncated because the Executive only had the period from November until February to develop it. This year’s planning process has been more sophisticated and has provided several opportunities for members, officers and partners to contribute views. The process has also been integrated with financial planning arrangements.
    • Performance Management – During 2002 the Executive has taken a number of steps to tighten financial and performance management with a view to improving performance.
    • Capacity Building – In order to deliver change within the organisation, the CPA team felt the Council needed to invest in key areas for action. These issues are being addressed in the budget process.

  1. The Audit Commission report will contain an analysis of Oxfordshire’s strengths as well as areas for improvement. It is complimentary about the progress being made by the County Council and it commends the Council for its commitment to change and for a range of initiatives to ‘Raise our Performance’. A copy of the full report will be made available to all county councillors after publication on 12 December. The attached Action Plan (Annex 1) (download as .doc file) concentrates only on areas for improvement, together with information about action being taken.

  2. This Action Plan is one of several covering similar territory (Raising our Performance, Peer Review etc) and the next step will be to integrate these various improvement plans in a comprehensive plan to support the Council’s strategic objective for ‘Raising Our Performance’.

    3. Conclusions

  3. The CPA process has been time consuming and at times has distracted officers from work to implement the Council’s agreed strategy on ‘Raising Our Performance’. Nonetheless the process has been useful in concentrating our attention on key areas for improvement.

  4. In 2001 the Executive set its sights on becoming a top performing Council and acknowledged that whilst services were good in many areas, we still had some way to go to be amongst the very best in the country. The CPA assessment confirmed this analysis and indicated that the steps taken by the Executive and the Chief Executive were moving the Council in the right direction.

  5. The CPA process now moves into the implementation phase and our Audit Commission ‘Relationship Manager’ will be working with us to co-ordinate audit and inspection work to support the improvement action agreed. The assessment will be ‘refreshed’ during 2003 and we would expect the action already in hand to show in an improved CPA assessment in the Autumn of 2003.

    6. RECOMMENDATIONS

  6. The Executive is RECOMMENDED to:

    1. approve the CPA corporate assessment action plan annexed to the report;

    2. instruct the Director for Strategy to incorporate this action plan in a comprehensive ‘Raising our Performance’ action plan;

    3. review progress with implementation as part of the Executive’s quarterly performance monitoring process.

STEPHEN CAPALDI
Director for Strategy

Background Papers: Nil

Contact Officer: Stephen Capaldi, Tel 01865 815466

28 November 2002

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