Beacon Council Awards

Council Performance

The Council's performance is externally measured in a number of ways, in order to ensure that the Council is focussing on the right priorities for Coventry and is operating effectively and efficiently in order to achieve those priorities. Audit and inspection provides the Council with an external validation of its performance and identification of areas for improvement. It offers a measure for Coventry's citizens of how well the Council and its partners are performing. The Council produces an annual report of its performance and inspection judgements.

Annual report

The Council's Annual Report 2009-2010, gives an overview of the Council's financial and service performance against the corporate objectives and management objectives of the Corporate Plan.

More detailed performance information can also be found in the end of year review of the Local Area Agreement.

Comprehensive Area Assessment

The Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) was introduced from April 2009 to provide a new framework for the independent assessment of local public services in England. It replaced the Comprehensive Performance Assessment which had been in place since 2002. The results of CAA, which included assessments for all local authority areas in England, were published on 9th December 2009 and can be viewed on the Oneplace website.

CAA was made up of two elements:

an area assessment that looks at how well local public services are delivering better results for local people across the whole area, focusing on agreed local priorities and how likely they are to improve in the future. Coventry's Area Assessment Report 2009
an organisational assessment combining the external auditor's assessment of value for money in the use of resources with a joint inspectorate assessment of service performance. The inspectorates judged Coventry to be performing well in the Organisational Assessment Report 2009

The government abolished the CAA in June 2010 so there will be no further reports on local authorities in the future.

A National Indicator Set was introduced in April 2008 to assess the progress of all local authorities and their partners. The national indicators cover all aspects of service delivery, from the environment, to health, from public safety to education. Progress on national indicators is monitored by services on a regular basis and used to target future improvement.

Audit and Inspection Letter

The annual Audit and Inspection letter provides an overall summary of the Audit Commission's assessment of the Council. It draws on audit, inspection and performance assessment work. The most recent Annual Audit Letter was published in December 2009.

Beacon Scheme

The Beacon Scheme was set up by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) to recognise examples of excellence in local government service delivery. Each year, there were ten categories of award covering different aspects of local government work. Beacon status was granted for one year, during which, individual councils shared their best practice to find out about Coventry's awards. The scheme ended in March 2010 and will be replaced by the Local Innovation Award Scheme.