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Comprehensive Performance Assessment

We're still a 4 Star Council

On Thursday 7 February 2008, the Audit Commission published the county council's latest Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) rating.

For the third year running, we were judged to be a four star council which is improving well. This puts Durham County Council in the top third for performance for all single tier and county councils in the country.

CPA 2007

The aim of CPA is to help local authorities improve the services they provide to the public.

CPA assesses how well councils across the country are performing. It pulls together all of the existing information on council performance held by councils, Government departments, auditors and inspectors into a simple easy to understand framework.

For our 2007 Comprehensive Performance Assessment, Audit Commission inspectors said:

  • “Durham County Council is improving well. It has made good progress in most priority areas. Services for children and young people have improved, with good ratings from other inspectorates including an outstanding judgement for support for school improvement."
  • “Educational attainment has risen again with much improved performance of looked after children.” Children and young people’s services received a score of three out of four.
  • “Provision for vulnerable adults and timeliness of assessments has improved, with more people taking up benefits and supported to live independently.” For adult social care services, we gained an overall score of three out of four.
  • “Recycling levels are increasing and household waste has reduced.” The council’s environmental services again gained a score of four out of four.
  • The council’s score in the CPA ‘culture block’ improved from three in 2006, to four out of four in 2007.
  • “Community engagement is strong and continues to improve. The council’s capacity to deliver its plans is improving.”
  • The Audit Commission has assessed how the council manages its finances and provides value for money. The council received a score of three out of four in this area.

One of the Best for the Past Four Years

In 2003 the county council was judged to be a 'good' council; in 2004 we were upgraded to be an 'excellent' council. Then in 2005, the Audit Commission changed the way that county councils and unitary councils are assessed by CPA. They introduced the more demanding, 'Harder Test' CPA, to reflect rising public expectations of council services and also the legal duty on councils to continuously improve their performance.

Under the harder test CPA, councils receive an overall performance category ranging from 0 to 4 stars, with 4 stars being the highest. The scoring system also includes a 'Direction of Travel Statement'. This gives an assessment of where each council's performance is heading, grading the direction of improvement as either 'improving strongly', 'improving well', 'improving adequately' or 'not improving adequately (or not improving)'.

The overall council rating is produced by looking at a county council's:

  • Environment services
  • Cultural services
  • Adult social care
  • Children and young people
  • Use of resources
  • Direction of travel statement

The ratings against each of these elements are revised annually.

The Audit Commission also carries out a Corporate Assessment of councils. In 2007 the Audit Commission conducted two key inspections of the council to inform the ratings for our corporate capacity to improve and our work with children and young people. Find out more about the Corporate Assessment and Joint Area Review (JAR) of Children's Services. The Corporate Assessment report is expected to be published in February 2008.

The following is a PDF of our 2007 CPA scorecard which also includes the council's Direction of Travel Statement. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this information:

PDF Icon2007 CPA scorecard.pdf (4 pages, 34kb)

Further information on the council's performance is also available on the Audit Commission website.

Previous CPAs of the Council


Information on the performance of all other councils which have been subject to CPA has been published on the Audit Commission's website at www.auditcommission.gov.uk/cpa/.

Find out more, visit our 'What's Best Value?' page.