Council Comment on Audit Commission Rating

9.44.00am GMT Sat 7th Mar 2009

Council Leader Isobel McCall has given her reaction to the Council's latest rating by the Audit Commission.

The Comprehensive Performance Assessment rating, previously three stars, has fallen to one star out of four. Much of this change was due to the Council receiving a low score in the Annual Performance Assessment of its children's services by Ofsted last year.

A low children's services APA score automatically lowers a council's next Audit Commission rating, although it is important to noted that there was no change to the rating for safeguarding children, which remains "adequate".

Also, as Councillor McCall pointed out, the Audit Commission's rating on a service-by-service basis across the Council shows that much has improved.

• Out of eight areas of council activity surveyed, Housing, Environment and Culture have shown an improvement since the last assessment, moving from scores of two to three (out of four), and Adult Social Care has maintained its good performance, with another score of three.

• Three other areas - Corporate Assessment/Capacity to Improve, Use of Resources, and Benefits - have remained the same.

• The Children and Young People service has a reduced score, from two last year to one this year (with the knock-on'effect on the overall CPA score explained above).

Isobel McCall said: "It is encouraging that the inspectors recognise these genuine achievements. Much good work is already underway to improve our services for Children and Young People, and this has been acknowledged by the inspectors. The creation of the new Children and Young People's Services Directorate sends out a strong signal of our intent to improve on perceived areas of weakness. The arrival of a new service director this spring will also bring fresh energy and ideas to this important area of our work.

"Also on the positive side, the Government acknowledges that our improvement rate, as measured by the percentage of performance indicators improving, is above the national average. So we can be confident we are headed firmly in the right direction.

"Nationally, we are not the only council to have been reduced to a one-star status, but we need to acknowledge the challenge we face here in Milton Keynes and use it as a springboard to go forward. We will continue to engage with government departments and the inspectorates about improvement planning and what sort of support we can expect. We will also put in place measures for the Council more widely, although in most cases we already have work underway (such as the work on our Development Control service).

"We will be working closely with councillors across all of the parties to address areas of concern and perceived weaknesses."