Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) measures how well councils are delivering services for local people and communities. It looks at performance from a range of perspectives and combines a set of judgments to provide both a simply understood rating and a more complete picture of where to focus activity to secure improvement. The Audit Commission first introduced CPA in 2002. Since then it has evolved in response to changes in the operational and regulatory environment, rising public expectations, and the performance of local government itself.

What is the CPA?
CPA stands for ‘Comprehensive Performance Assessment’. It is a system for helping local councils in England to improve local services for their communities. The CPA was introduced in 2002 following the Government White Paper 'Strong Local Government - Quality Public Services'. The CPA is overseen by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), which says, “…the CPA [has] brought together, for the first time, a rounded picture of performance as the basis for central and local government to work together to achieve improvements in local services.”

Local Authorities are categorised in one of two ways; for single tier authorities a star rating of between 0 and 4 will be allocated. The previous ratings of ‘excellent’ to ‘poor’ continue to apply as the assessment model used for District Councils.

The Harder Test
From 2006 a new more challenging CPA framework was introduced – “The Harder Test”- to ‘respond to the changing environment in which local government is operating.’ Greater emphasis was placed on councils' important role as community leaders. As part of the corporate assessment, councils were judged on their performance against the previously agreed shared priorities between central and local government. In 2006, CPA results showed that 79 per cent of single tier and county councils reached the top two star rating categories. Furthermore, for the first time since CPA began in 2002, no councils were in the bottom CPA category and 32 councils have moved up at least one star rating. Councils showed a particular improvement in their environmental services, with all councils achieving at least 2 out of 4, and 84 per cent performing in the top two categories for environment.

The Framework was revised once again during 2007 following consultation on a number of proposed refinements. Responses to the consultation showed strong support for minimal changes to the existing framework and a consolidation of the approach rather than any major changes. It is intended that the revisions will ensure that CPA continues to provide a clear picture of councils’ performance, reflect the context in which they work and will support continuous improvement over the next few years prior to the implementation of Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) from April 2009.

Elements of CPA

The elements of this framework comprise:

• Corporate assessments – periodic assessments by the Commission;
• Use of resources – annual assessments by the Commission, based on work by appointed auditors;
• Service assessments – annual assessments by the Commission or provided to the Commission by Ofsted, CSCI and BFI; and
• Direction of travel – annual assessments, based on the work of relationship managers and reported by the Commission.

Culture Service Assessment

The overall objective in designing the culture service assessment was to take a broad view of councils’ performance across the range of cultural services.  This includes areas of activity around libraries, sport and recreation, museums and the arts.  An increasing focus on the community leadership role of councils within CPA helps to recognise that cultural services and activity are in some important respects different from those of housing and environment.  Significant aspects of activity are not prescribed by a statutory duty.  Councils nevertheless have a role, often with partners, in facilitating and enabling the provision of wider cultural opportunities to be available to the local community.

The shared central and Local Government priorities:

• Sustainable communities and transport
• Safer and stronger communities
• Healthier communities
• Older people, and
• Children and young people.

Source: ODPM website

The key to the CPA performance management is underpinned by performance indicators (PIs). Indeed, the Audit Commission has said that they will be reducing the level of inspection and putting more emphasis on PIs. It is also important to note that to date the burden of the CPA has fallen on County Councils and Unitary Authorities. The Audit Commission has just published proposals (September 2005) for developing the CPA in District Councils from 2006, with the likelihood that there will be a more flexible regime for districts, with the lack of a Cultural block.

Jazz Mouse - Spark Children's Festival. Image: Alan Fletcher

What is its impact on Local Authorities?
The impact of the CPA on Local Authorities has been substantial in two ways. Firstly the publication of annual CPA scores has been a form of ‘name and shame’ of under-performing authorities.

Secondly, it has arguably substantially changed the jobs of Local Authority Chief Executives, Council Leaders and Cabinet Members. The key task of the Council Leaders and Chief Executives is to get their Authority’s CPA score up and keep it at the highest level, for this both guarantees government finance and also frees their hand to manage their affairs. The government has said that excellent authorities will have greater management flexibility. In contrast, Authorities that continually under-perform are likely to have the ignominy of Whitehall-led ‘task teams’ coming in and taking over their management.

What’s the impact of this on Local Authority arts and cultural services?
Well, up to now, it’s been all and nothing really. The arts as we know are a non-statutory service. That means that Local Authorities are able to directly and indirectly provide cultural services (through part VII, section 145 of the 1972 Local Government Act), but are not obliged to do so. This lack of obligation has meant that there is no consistent standard for providing or measuring arts services. So every authority does it differently. In contrast Libraries are a local authority statutory service and they have a fulsome body of measurement indicators to support this. Cultural services were not part of the original CPA and so in one sense it has had no impact. On the other hand, as Local Authorities have faced increasing pressures to improve measurable services (within the CPA), so services that sit outside of it are likely to be squeezed.

What is the CPA Culture Block?
The Culture Block presently only applies to single tier authorities – Counties, Mets and Unitaries. It is a means to assess the delivery of Libraries, Arts, Museums, Sports, Play and Heritage.  The assessment is on the basis of existing performance indicators, information already collected by government, and “commentaries” from regional agencies. For the arts, the Regional Commentary would be supplied by the Arts Council, and the key PIs for the arts are at present :
• BVPI119: % of residents satisfied with theatres and concert halls provided by the local authority (and shortly to be extended to include major events)
• Arts Council commentaries on service quality and delivery
nalgao believes these PIs are far from adequate in representing the richness and diversity of Local Authority arts services, and have been working hard with Arts Council England and ID&A to develop a further range of indicators as part of the Culture Block, which have now been forwarded to the Audit Commission for scrutiny and review. These include using a new indication to develop a quality standard for local authority arts services, and using Artsmark as an indication to gauge how arts and education standards are being developed. If supported, these new indicators will further profile arts services within the Culture Block.
For District authorities (i.e. not single-tier ones), there is as yet no Culture Block within the assessment process, and instead there is a more arbitrary assessment framework, considering local indicators. A "basket" of local arts indicators has been developed by ACE, nalgao and LGA, and appear on the Audit Commission website. The future of Culture Block indicators may rest on the forthcoming review of local government, and especially its impact on two tier authorities. It is presently uncertain whether a culture block will be developed for districts in the future, post the latest one round of CPA assessments, which will be reviewed again in 2007/8. Although districts only comprise 7% of all local authority spending, it is clear that cultural and arts services play a larger role within districts per proportion of spending, and leaving out cultural services assessment could further diminish the importance of the arts within these authorities.

That’s what you need to know. Now what do you need to do?
Performance Indicators for the arts will have the most strength and meaning if all Local Authorities collect them regardless of the CPA. We hope there will be perhaps 3 or 4 to deal with (though you can add more local indicators if you wish!). You need to ensure that you collect the data – or someone collects it for you – and that these indicators are part of your corporate performance management system. There is no point in just collecting them once and forgetting about them. They need to be updated annually at least. And finally, the CPA is about service improvement, so we all need to think about what the data means and how it can be used to trigger improvements.

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