The recent Government White Paper mapped out a new Performance Framework for councils. Its aim is to reduce radically the number of nationally-required local targets, performance indicators and reporting and to replace these with new opportunities for citizens to hold their local providers to account for the quality of services
The new performance framework will
- Strengthen accountability to citizens and communities through increasing choice, encouraging authorities to provide citizens and communities with timely information on services, introducing more effective means of redress when things go wrong and increasing opportunities for communities to run local services and manage local facilities
- Provide a better balance between national and local priorities, with a drastic reduction in the number of national performance indicators.
- Put in place the following key elements:
An annual risk assessment which identifies the key risks to outcomes or delivery for each area.
An annual scored Use of Resources judgement for local public sector bodies, drawn from the annual audit.
An annual scored Direction of Travel judgement which assesses the effectiveness of each local authority in driving continuous improvement.
Inspection activity by relevant inspectorates targeted primarily on the basis of the risk assessment.
Reporting to Citizens
Meeting the duty to secure the participation of citizens will depend in large part on providing citizens with accurate, accessible and up to date information on service performance. Only with this information can local people effectively hold public service providers to account for their performance.
The PI set
At present there are between 600 and 1,200 indicators against which areas must report to central Government. Our aim is to reduce radically the number of these national indicators to around 200 against which all areas will report. This single set of indicators, which will draw from existing indicators where appropriate, will replace other sets of performance indicators applying to local authorities and the services they deliver in partnership with others – such as BVPIs, social care Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) indicators and other programme-specific indicators.
Wherever possible the national indicators will be outcome measures, with output or process measures used only where absolutely essential and where they are robust proxies or lead indicators. The aim will be to avoid input measures.
From April 2009, we will build on CPA with a system based on a combination of risk assessment, largely risk-triggered inspection, and audit. The new regime will be known as the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA).
Judgement on risks
The annual risk assessment of local services in each area will be undertaken jointly by the relevant public service inspectorates working together, led by the Audit Commission. They will draw on information from other regulators, government departments and Non-Departmental Public Bodies as necessary. A risk judgement will be drawn annually from the risk assessment and published for every area. We will ask the Audit Commission to work with the other inspectorates to develop and trial a methodology for undertaking this risk assessment, so that it is ready for full implementation from April 2009. This risk assessment will cover risks to delivery and the effectiveness of action taken by local partners in response to those risks.