Despite recent successes the Audit Commission will not be complacent about the need to continue improving local services, writes Frances Stone.

The Audit Commission’s remit covers more than 15,000 public bodies, which between them spend nearly £125 billion of public money each year.

We have a challenging role to ensure this money is spent efficiently, economically and effectively and aim to promote proper stewardship and governance in order to help those who provide public services to achieve better outcomes for the public.

The Commission’s work covers local government, health, housing, criminal justice and fire and rescue services; and this wide-ranging role provides us with an invaluable insight into the overall impact of public services on users.

Our work in local government is clearly defined and is closely linked to our strategic plan, which sets out how the Commission will carry out its role. The Commission works with a broad range of organisations including the Improvement and Development Agency, the newly created Healthcare Commission and the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Housing Corporation and all those involved in regulation and helping to improve public services.

Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) is a key activity in our work with councils across the country. It was established in 2002 when we assessed all 150 single-tier councils and county councils in England. Since then, we have re-assessed those councils and are more than half way through our assessment of district councils. We will shortly be extending the regime to fire authorities and the Greater London Authority.

CPA was introduced as a way of supporting councils to deliver improvements in services to local people. It brings together information on service performance within councils as well as a corporate assessment of a council’s ability to improve. This results in councils being classified as excellent, good, fair, weak or poor.

The process helps councils to focus on their own areas for improvement and allows inspectors and auditors to take a more co-ordinated and targeted approach. It has also allowed the government to provide additional freedoms and flexibilities to higher performing councils, including reduced ring-fencing of funding, additional powers to trade and slimmed down requirements to produce statutory plans.

Importantly, the CPA findings are reported to local people in simple terms. Local and national media have used this to good effect to highlight the standard of local services.

We have now assessed the single-tier and county councils twice and the results are encouraging. The key message is that these councils are improving across the board. All types of council (urban, rural, county and unitary) have improved and 26 councils were able to demonstrate sufficient improvement within a year in order to move up a category – many more have set the foundations for improvements in the near future. CPA is a catalyst for this as well as a way of highlighting improvements in service delivery.

We are particularly encouraged to see that the most rapid progress has been in councils currently classified as poor or weak. The biggest strides have been made in education, social care for adults and housing.

CPA has been successful but we are not complacent. We are developing a new framework for CPA from 2005, which will strengthen the existing framework. It will increase the focus on service users, balance councils’ service delivery and community leadership roles and increase focus on value for money. It will also address the effectiveness of councils at addressing sometimes conflicting national and local priorities.

In summary, CPA has already shown itself to be an important tool for driving improvement in local government. Our plans for the future build on this success and ensure that CPA continues to deliver service improvements within a slimmer and more targeted regulation framework.

Frances Stone is managing director of the Audit Commission.