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ITEM EX14

EXECUTIVE - 13 MAY 2003

"CPA - THE NEXT STEPS"

Draft Response to the Audit Commission

Introduction

  1. The CPA process supports the ambitious improvement programme that Oxfordshire County Council had in place and offers an opportunity to strengthen those plans.
  2. Our CPA assessment encouraged us to question whether the arrangements we had put in place to strengthen our ability to improve performance were sufficient. Having considered the arguments put forward by the CPA process, further significant changes were made.
  3. Our commitment to the principle of improvement is clear and we welcome the early publication of proposals for the next stages of the CPA process.
  4. We seek to become an ‘Excellent’ authority by 2005/06 and thus our response to the proposals is shaped by that ambition. As requested we have structured our response around the four main headings of the consultation document.

    5. Defining the objectives

    CPA development in the medium to longer term (2006-10)

  5. In broad terms we support the individual objectives for long-term development.

    6. CPA development in the short term

  6. We support the principle of maintaining a stable approach to improvement planning and future assessment. We believe this stability should extend to all aspects of the process, including the level of performance required to achieve a specific rating. It would be inconsistent(and bring the process into disrepute) if identical levels of performance led to different judgements being awarded.
  7. The proposals change the impact of corporate capacity on the overall assessment score. They change the basis of CPA, disadvantage those authorities where strengthening corporate capacity is a priority, ignore resources that are being invested in the organisation for the future and are inconsistent with the declared intention to maintain stability and certainty in the CPA framework.
  8. The effort to move from ‘Fair’ to ‘Good’ should require the same effort as moving from ‘Good’ to ‘Excellent’ but this is not the case at present.

    9. Future CPA strategy – 2006 and 2010

  9. We welcome the proposal to make more significant changes in 2005/06. This allows time for effective consultation and perhaps more importantly time for authorities to consider and plan for the implications of any changes. Whilst it is planned to hold a detailed consultation exercise in the Autumn we can offer the following comments.
  10. The CPA process has attempted to make overall assessments of large and quite complex organisations. In practical terms the value of such an approach makes sense where the services reviewed fall within the umbrella of one organisation. Even so applying one judgement that covers services as diverse as education and social care has limitations in terms of its practical use. Extending judgements to geographic areas raises even bigger concerns. The focus of CPA should be the individual organisation since they can then be held accountable for improving performance. Area based reviews make it more difficult to pinpoint accountability unless they are specific inspections which lead to recommendations for individual organisations to address. It makes sense for them to take place as a separate activity to the CPA process itself.
  11. We believe that all services should be included within the CPA process, including Fire and Trading Standards.
  12. The consultation paper identifies the need to strengthen the BVPI framework and reform the BVPP strategy and we support this ambition. The need for local government to embrace performance indicators appears to have been achieved but more needs to be done. We encourage three changes in this area:
    1. development of a limited number of key indicators to provide a ‘basket’ of measures for core services and shared priorities;
    2. development of the indicators within this set to measure performance in more effective and practical ways;
    3. develop consistency and continuity within the basket to support the use of indicators for trend and comparator analysis over longer timescales.

    CPA – short term proposals

    Overall framework

  13. We suggest that there may be merit in considering an option where there is no short term re-assessment of CPA scores. This would allow sizeable organisations a reasonable period of time to implement improvement plans and the impact of changes to manifest themselves in service performance. Such an approach avoids having to construct an interim approach to assessment.
  14. We support the intention to measure progress against the 2002 baseline and to retain the existing framework.
  15. We support the principle of stability but the proposals do amount to a change of methodology. Imposing a ‘trigger’ before a corporate assessment and requiring a significant improvement in service scores creates a situation where authorities with identical service and corporate scores will receive different assessments. This would be an unacceptable outcome.

    16. Service Judgements

  16. As full details of the approach to be taken on Social Care, Education, Environment, Libraries, Leisure and Resources have yet to be advised we cannot comment in detail.
  17. In terms of the two options detailed in appendices 3a and 3b, we favour 3b as progression would be based upon the authorities original score. However we regret the imposition of thresholds that differ from the original model.

    18. Improvements in overall rating

  18. Although not referred to in the consultation document, it has come to our attention that the Audit Commission may prevent authorities from moving directly from an assessment of ‘Fair’ to one of ‘Excellent’. We consider this unfair, particularly for authorities that are also prevented from receiving a corporate assessment in 2003/04. It is perfectly feasible for an authority to make sufficient progress over 2 years to warrant an improvement in rating of this sort.

May 2003

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