Comprehensive performance assessment

On 22nd July 2004 the Council received a FAIR rating from the CPA. Here is some background on the process:

What is CPA?

A Government initiative where the Audit Commission assesses every Councils capacity to deliver improving public services. The CPA Audit Commission Chairman says "CPA is about helping councils to deliver better services to their communities. It does this by providing a baseline assessment of every council, looking at its leadership, financial and management arrangements" (June 2003).

Scoring is on the following scale, Excellent, Good, Fair, Weak or Poor. Following this an improvement plan will be agreed to ensure we continue to improve.

What happened and When?

July 4th 2003

  • 1st Draft Self Assessment
    We produced a self-assessment and sent it to our "Peer Review Team". This was our first attempt at an honest appraisal of the council.

September 10th and 11th 2003

  • Peer Review Team Inspection
    The 7-person Peer Review team were from the West Midlands Local Government Association (WMLGA). They used our self-assessment to see if we really know our authority and are addressing the key issues. From their findings we produced an action plan, which sought to rectify areas of weakness.

January 2004

  • First Meeting
    This involved the Inspection team leader - Rachel Raymond, Chief Executive - John Ballantyne and Leader - Cllr Mrs Spink. All the Documents requested were also sent to the inspection team.

February 2004

  • Final Self-Assessment submitted to the Audit Commission.

March 2004

  • Meeting with the Inspection team to discuss any issues arising from the documentation sent in January plus a tour of the district.

March (Week Beginning 29th)

2004

  • CPA Inspection
    The CPA Inspectors were on site for one week. The CPA inspectors interviewed members of the public during their inspection. We would like to thank all those who participated for giving up the time to make their views about SCDC known.

June 2004

  • The CPA Team submitted a draft report, which included our rating. We were then able to comment on this draft before the final was published.

July 2004

  • We made the Final CPA Report and score publicly available.

Where are we now?

The inspection is over and the inspectors have written their report. We have now published the report and score to the public along with all the other district councils in Cambridgeshire:


In January 2005 we published our Improvement Plan (this is subject to change but will be updated here) We continue to meet with our Relationship Manager Dorothy Welsh to discuss our improvement plan and the future direction we need to take, including forthcoming inspections of services and Council processes.

Related Links:
Audit Commission Website (This link will open in a new window)

For further information please contact: policy.performance@scambs.gov.uk or Tel: 08450 450 500.