Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA)

Central Government abolished Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA) in May 2010 and all work related to this has now stopped.

This page provides information about Wirral’s last assessment under the CAA framework.

Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) was introduced as a new way of assessing local public services in England and it replaced the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA). Its aimed to examine how well councils are working together with other public bodies to meet the needs of the people they serve.

There were two parts to the comprehensive area assessment:

  • Area assessment

This looks at how well partners (including the Council, NHS Wirral, Merseyside Police and the Fire and Rescue Service) work together to deliver better quality of life outcomes for their area and focuses on three key questions:

- How well do local priorities express community needs and aspirations?

- How well are the outcomes and improvements needed being delivered?

- What are the prospects for future improvement?

The area assessment is in the form of a narrative judgment – i.e. it is explained rather than scored and a series of green flags (to show best practice) and red flags (areas to be addressed) can be given to each of the areas.

  • Organisational assessment:

This covers two separate areas:

- Use of Resources / Value for money – looking at how the council manages finances, governs its business and manages resources

- Managing performance – looking at how well the council is delivering against the services it has prioritised and against outcomes that are important to local people, as well as whether the council has the leadership, capacity and capability needed to deliver future improvements.

The organisational assessment is scored from 1 to 4:

  • level 1 is poor performance
  • level 2 is adequate performance
  • level 3 is good performance
  • level 4 is excellent performance.

Assessments for the area and the Council as an organisation are made public every year and provide an annual snapshot of quality of life in the area. The results are displayed on the One Place website.

2009 results

The first set of results were released in December 2009 and have been published on the One Place website. The headlines for Wirral are:

Area assessment - the council working with partners was awarded:

Read the area assessment full report and the area assessment summary.

Organisational assessment - the council achieved for:

  • managing performance – 2 out of 4 (performing adequately)
  • use of resources – 2 out of 4 (performing adequately)

Read the organisational assessment full report or the organisational assessment summary.

Overall we are performing adequately with a score of 2 out of 4.

More information about Wirral and the Organisational Assessment can be found on the One Place website.