Comprehensive Area Assessment
What is Comprehensive Area Assessment?
Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) was introduced in 2009 by a range of independent watchdogs, including Ofsted and the Audit Commission, as a way of assessing local public services in England. It replaced the Audit Commission's previous assessment regime know as Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA).
CAA examined how well councils and other public bodies, working together, met the needs of the people they serve and tackled major issues in the area. The results of these area assessments were published on 9 December 2009 on the Oneplace website.
In the Area Assessments CAA looked across councils, health bodies, police forces, fire and rescue services and others responsible for local public services. In addition, the council was subject to an Organisational Assessment in which it has been assessed as 'performing excellently'.
The new Government announced in 2010 that CAA is to be abolished with immediate effect. There will be no further updates to the 2009 assessments detailed below.
Press releases on CAA:
Organisational assessment for the council
The organisational assessment of councils consists of four themes. It combines the Audit Commission's assessment of how well the council delivers value for money through the use of resources with an assessment of how well it manages its performance to form an assessment of overall effectiveness. Overall the council has been assessed as one of 10 single-tier councils in the country to be in the top 'performs excellently' category. The 2009 scores for the themes that contribute to this overall rating for the council are as below:
| Managing performance |
4 out of 4 |
| Use of resources |
3 out of 4 |
| Managing finances |
3 out of 4 |
| Governing the business |
3 out of 4 |
| Managing resources |
3 out of 4 |
Area assessment
Area assessments look at how well local public services (not just the council) are delivering better results for people in the area. Judgements are made about how well things are going now, and whether they will get better or worse in the future. The area assessments concentrate on the issues that are most important to each local area. These assessments are not scored but the report comments positively on many areas of partnership work in Wandsworth.
