Links to other Inspections
The Joint Area Review (JAR) in Leicester was carried out at the same time as the Audit Commission’s Corporate Assessment (CA) of the City Council.
The CA and the JAR focussed on similar and contrasting aspects of services provided for local people:
- Corporate Assessment examines how the council is working corporately, and with its partners, to improve services and deliver improved outcomes for local people. It:
- examines the political, managerial and community leadership of the council
- measures how well councils understand their local communities
- assesses how well this understanding translates into councils’ ambitions and priorities
- judges councils’ capacity to deliver these ambitions and priorities, and their achievements
As part of its judgement on a council’s achievement, corporate assessment reports on the contribution of the council to the quality of outcomes for children and young people. The joint area review provides the judgements for this aspect of the assessment.
An annual performance assessment (APA) is also conducted each year in every council and where a joint area review takes place at or around the same time of year as the annual performance assessment, the latter will be integrated into the joint area review process to avoid duplication.
APA focuses on the contribution that a council’s services have made in the previous twelve months towards improving outcomes for children and young people.
It analyses a wide range of published evidence, including data, indicators, the council’s Children and Young People’s Plan, any reviews of this plan and other reference or supporting information. Unlike the joint area review, there is no on-site investigative fieldwork carried out for annual performance assessment, although inspectors meet with the council’s senior managers to discuss any issues that have arisen during the analysis of information. Leciester's APA took place in early October and the result will be published soon.
The overall effectiveness of a council’s children’s services grade provides the rating for the children and young people’s block in the Audit Commission's Annual Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA). The CPA is closely linked with the CA has also been developed by the Audit Commission for single tier and county councils, district councils and fire and rescue authorities. The frameworks pull together a range of information to reach an overall judgement on a council's or fire and rescue authority's performance.
The frameworks have four common components:
- corporate assessments
- use of resources assessments
- service assessments
- direction of travel assessments
For single tier and county councils, the first three components are combined using rules designed to ensure that minimum standards are being met across the board, to generate one of five star categories (4 - 0 stars). Currently Leicester has 3 stars, which means it is performing and improving well. For more information of CPA star scoring, see the Audit Commission's website www.audit-commission.gov.uk/cpa.
The joint area review is also aligned with the inspection of youth offending teams undertaken by HMI of Probation. We will aim to add more information on the process and the progress of the inspection of Leicester's Youth Offending Service here as soon as we have it.