Comprehensive Area Assessment

Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) is the new method by which the Audit Commission will assess how local partners are performing and improving outcomes for their communities. It marks a major change which will help local partnerships to drive their own improvement and strengthen the ability of local people to challenge and influence how their services are provided

The Audit Commission published a second consultation paper on 29 July with a deadline for response of 20 October 2008. This note provides a brief summary of the proposals and invites you to contribute to a response on behalf of Plymouth 2020 Partnership.

The CAA framework and proposed changes

CAA will have two main components rather than three as originally proposed. There will be a strong link between these assessments with the potential for scoring to be influenced by concerns or very positive achievements in either review.

Area Assessment

The Area Assessment will assess joint impact on improving locally important outcomes and will span the work of all local partners including health, policing, fire and housing. It will pose three questions:

• How well do local priorities express community needs and aspirations?
• How well are the outcomes and improvements needed being delivered?
• What are the prospects for future improvements?

The outcomes covered may include safety, health, environment, economy, community cohesion, housing, young people etc, focusing on those which are most important locally. Area Assessment will be a qualitative evaluation focusing on sustainable outcomes rather than management or process. It will not rely on large numbers of key lines of enquiry or grade descriptors.

Organisational Assessment

The Organisational Assessment will focus on how each individual public body delivers value for money and manages performance. Organisational Assessments for councils and fire will combine the previous Use of Resources and Direction of Travel Assessments. Its four themes will ask how they:

• Manage finance to deliver value for money
• Govern the business and commission services in order to improve outcomes
• Manage resources, including natural resources, physical assets and people
• Manage performance, successfully delivering outcomes, providing leadership and building capacity and capability to improve

Organisational Assessments for health, policing, fire and housing will be brought more closely into alignment around common themes. Interim arrangements will build on Audit Commission judgments as far as possible to avoid duplication of work. In the longer term the Care Quality Commission will develop a more integrated approach for Adult Social Care, Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and National Health Service (NHS) Trusts and the new Assessment of Policing and Community Safety will complement the CAA, with proposals to be published in the autumn.

External challenge is recognised as important and the Audit Commission proposes to draw external peers into the CAA process more heavily than was originally suggested.

Scoring and reporting

Area Assessments will be complex judgments and a narrative report will be provided rather than a simple score.  This report will cover each of the main outcome areas and may be accompanied by:

• A green flag, where there is evidence of exceptional success and innovation from which others can learn
• A red flag where there are significant concerns about outcomes, performance or future prospects not being adequately addressed

Options presented for the Organisational Assessment involve alternative matrices of numerical scores for each element, various permutations of which will lead to the output 'performs poorly', 'adequately', 'well' or 'excellently'. Views on the options for scoring are sought through the consultation exercise.

[Back to top]

Views of local people

The views of local people and their engagement and involvement is central to the assessment process with account taken of how well the duty to involve is being implemented

Self evaluation and local performance information

Local partners are expected to develop robust means of evaluating their collective performance and reviewing their priorities. CAA will take such work as its starting point, relying upon it if it is sufficiently rigorous and challenging. Toolkits are being developed by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and Local Government Association (LGA) to provide a methodology that is sufficiently robust.

The national indicator set remains an important source of evidence for area and organisational assessments with particular attention to national indicators which are Local Area Agreements (LAA) targets. The Commission has set up a prototype CAA reporting tool for consideration which can be accessed through the consultation document.

Other inspections

Inspections of some direct services will continue such as children’s homes, schools and early years settings (Ofsted) and adult social care homes and hospitals (Care Quality Commission). From April 2009 rolling programmes of inspections will be the exception, inspecting specific services for those considered vulnerable. It should be noted that Ofsted will lead a new programme of the inspection of children in public care and of safeguarding. Other inspection activity will be triggered by area or organisational assessments.

Equality issues

CAA will place great emphasis on how local partnerships understand the nature of their area and how they impact diverse communities, identifying and addressing inequitable outcomes. Evidence of inequitable outcomes will prompt further investigation.

Finding out more

The full consultation paper and a PowerPoint demonstration of the proposed reporting format can be found at on the Audit Commission website.

The Audit Commission are holding a series of free roadshows, details of which are available on the Audit Commission website.

How to have your say

If you would like to contribute to the joint response please complete the Audit Commissions’ questions below by Monday 13 October 2008. You can also reply to the Audit Commission directly using their online form on the Audit Commission website.

[Back to top]