Comprehensive Area Assessment
Stop Press! CAA abolished...
The new coalition government has announced the immediate cessation of the Comprehensive Area Assessment process, including the Use of Resources Assessment for individual organisations within the Partnership. Further details can be found on the Audit Commission website.
We are awaiting announcements as to the regime that will succeed CAA. In the meantime, we are leaving the information below and will post updates as the new processes are developed.
Inspections of adults and children's services by the Care Quality Commission and OfStEd will continue.
The Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) was introduced in April 2009 as a new method of assessing the performance of local public services. The ‘Joint Inspectorates’ form a combined judgment on the area’s services, their assessment of local priorities and how well they are delivering, as well as their capacity to improve. The Joint Inspectorates are:
- Audit Commission, which has a lead role
- Care Quality Commission
- HM Inspectorate of Constabulary
- HM Inspectorate of Prisons
- HM Inspectorate of Probation
- Ofsted
CAA Results 2009
Full details of the Area Assessment report can be found on the Audit Commission's Oneplace website. In order to highlight areas where the borough is performing strongly, the Audit Commission awards 'green flags'. Similarly, where they think that improvement needs to be made, they highlight this by means of 'red flags'.
For 2009, the borough was given one green flag and two red flags. The green flag was for creating an environmentally sustainable and resilient borough and recognised our work on climate change, recycling and the emerging environmental credentials of such major developments as the Town Square and Barking Riverside. The first of the red flags was for health outcomes and partnership working, where the Audit Commission felt that, whilst we had agreed the priorities and understood the issues that borough faced, our partnership working did not match the scale of the challenge posed by residents' poor health. The other red flag was for burglary, robbery and theft, where the Audit Commission felt that the rising incidence of these crime types, though not unique to Barking & Dagenham, was not being matched by proportionate partnership action.
Obviously, the Partnership, whilst pleased with the green flag, was disappointed to have been awarded the two red flags. The new Health & Wellbeing Strategy, and the actions that it contains, are the major plank of our response to the health inequalities flag, and the Safer Borough Board has undertaken substantial additional work to tackle acquisitive crime since the inspection period. We will post documents relating to the work we have been doing as the board discuss and refine the programme. We have a sound track record in being committed to learning from inspection processes, and we are confident that the issues raised by the Audit Commission, where they were not already in hand, are being robustly addressed.