Comprehensive Area Assessment, or ‘OnePlace’, is a new way of assessing public organisations and local authorities in England. It examines how well public bodies are working together to meet the needs of the people they serve. It's a joint assessment made by a group of six independent watchdogs.
Assessments are publicly available, in print and online, and provide an annual snapshot of quality of life in the area.
The results are published on a new Oneplace website [external link]
The full assessment for Darlington is available at Darlington Oneplace [external link]
Comprehensive Area Assessment looks at a number of things, including the strength of local economies and labour markets, affordable housing, children's well-being, crime and safety, support for individuals to improve their health, provision for people whose circumstances make them vulnerable, and the quality of the local environment.
Comprehensive Area Assessment – organisational assessment
Alongside the overall assessment of the area, different inspectorates provide a more detailed organisational assessment.
For Darlington Borough Council – a copy of the organisational assessment is available to download here.
organisational assessment – summary [pdf document]
organisational assessment – full report [pdf document]
What is Comprehensive Area Assessment for?
Comprehensive Area Assessment is a catalyst for improvement. It will give people information about how well services are delivered locally, and help them make decisions in their communities, in their own use of services, or perhaps where they live.
For those delivering public services it helps encourage improvement by shining a spotlight on those things which need to be improved, and shares practices that are achieving exceptional success.
For Government, Comprehensive Area Assessment provides reassurance that public money is being well spent, and assesses how well local services are improving.
Who's running it?
The inspectorates are:
- Audit Commission
- Care Quality Commission
- HM Inspectorate of Constabulary
- HM Inspectorate of Prisons
- HM Inspectorate of Probation
- The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted).
Together they hold local services collectively to account. In April 2009, the Care Quality Commission took over from the Commission for Social Care Inspection, Healthcare Commission and Mental Health Act Commission.
Through Comprehensive Area Assessment, all local service inspectorates will work together to judge how well public services are serving their communities and in particular, how likely they are to tackle major issues in the future.
The focus will be on real world outcomes for local people, and not just on the internal workings of individual services.
Find out more
For more information, please contact Seth Pearson, Darlington Partnership Director on (01325) 346773 or write to: Seth Pearson, Town Hall, Darlington, DL1 5QT or e-mail: seth.pearson@darlington.org.uk