Forum Brief: Council standards

League tables from the Audit Commission have found that council standards have improved across the board.

There are now 26 councils out of 150 in England and Wales rated as excellent - four more than in 2002. The number considered good is up two to 56 and 40 have been rated as fair.

Nick Raynsford, local government minister, said: "I'm pleased with the results which show councils are rising to the challenge of delivering better quality public services. We introduced CPA to drive improvement in local government and that is exactly what it is doing.

"But CPA is not about scoring points for the sake of it. Better public services make a difference to people's lives. Councils which have raised their performance in CPA are delivering real improvements on the ground.

"The results are not the end of the story. We expect all councils, no matter how well they have scored today, to continue the drive to make public services better in a cost-effective way. The government will continue to work directly with the poorer performing councils to help them improve their services.

"But councils should be aware better performance cannot come at an unreasonable cost to the taxpayer. We recently announced every local authority will get an above inflation increase in grant next year. We expect to see council tax rises next year in the low single figures.

"Not all councils yet have success stories to tell. Last year's CPA highlighted the wide variation in performance amongst councils. For many councils the journey to deliver first rate services will be a long one.

"For those rated as 'poor', the last year has been about putting the building blocks for better services in place. Improvement may not be immediate, but I know that a lot of hard work has been put in over the last year and I hope to see further upward movement over the coming months."

Forum Response: Local Government Association

Sir Jeremy Beecham, LGA chairman, said: "With 82 councils now 'good' or 'excellent' (55 per cent), well up on last year, and improvement across all categories, local government has a lot to be proud of.

"These results show that councils are helping each other on a path of continuous improvement, as measured by external inspectors, but they don't tell the whole story by any means.

"What matters to us even more are our own communities and whether we are doing the right thing by them. Faced with a ballot box, there is no room for complacency.

"However, those services that are a national priority, schools and social services for instance, should rightly be compared on a national basis, and the standards set by the best should be aspired to by the rest.

"We are meeting that challenge well - it is time that government and its agencies were put to the test too.

"The sooner this improvement is rewarded with the faster delivery of freedoms and flexibilities, which will enable councils to adopt more innovative and radical improvements, the better it will be for the people who receive council services."

"In this, the second year of Comprehensive Performance Assessment, the Audit Commission has not comprehensively re-examined each authority's performance. These results are merely a refresh. Any number-crunching inspection process is bound to have its shortcomings and the CPA process provides only a snapshot of how a council is performing at any one point in time.

"The services that councils provide are complex and priorities should ultimately be determined locally."

Forum Response: Local Government Information Unit

Dennis Reed, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, said: "In the Comprehensive Performance Assessment process local government is steadily delivering in those areas of improvement that are central government priorities, rather than necessarily on those areas that might be local priorities in different parts of the country. Such is the top-down nature of the CPA.

"Even after wading through all the Whitehall red tape to deliver their side of the deal, those councils classed as 'excellent' have found that they cannot rely on ministers to deliver their side of the bargain.

"The new 'freedoms and flexibilities' have not appeared to the extent that was expected. Indeed, 'excellent' councils have not even escaped from the threat of capping."