Comprehensive Area Assessment

From April 2008 the local government performance assessment framework changed from Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) to Comprehensive Area Assessment. (CAA)

What this means in practice is that rather then inspecting and assessing public bodies such as the local Council, Police, Ambulance and Fire services and the NHS Primary Care Trust (PCT) in isolation, the government inspectorates will work together to assess how these public bodies and the voluntary services work together to deliver services to the local area.

Comprehensive Area Assessment also differs from CPA by making an assessment of the needs of communities and identifying where services fall short of these needs. The intention is to ensure that the public services are setting their priorities and focussing their efforts on meeting the needs of the community they serve

• CAA is about places and people, especially those in need
• CAA is about quality of life and focus on outcomes
• CAA will give people a snapshot of life in their local area each year
• CAA will help local services improve the quality of life in their area
• CAA will help people understand if they are getting good value for money from their local services

Comprehensive Performance Assessment

Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) was introduced in 2002 by the Audit Commission as a means to form an overall view of the performance of councils, and their arrangements for improving their services to the public.

The CPA assessment examined councils against four key questions:

• What is the Council trying to achieve?
• How has the Council set about delivering its priorities for improvement?
• What improvements has the Council achieved / not achieved to date?
• In the light of what the Council has learned to date, what does it plan to do next?

All district councils underwent a Comprehensive Performance Assessment between June 2003 and December 2004 and Hart was recognised as a 'Fair' authority. An Improvement Plan was prepared in response. The CPA report and the council's improvement plan are available in Adobe pdf format from the Downloads section of this page.