Haringey Council statement on 2008 Comprehensive Performance Assessment

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Permalink Reply by David Schmitz on March 6, 2009 at 16:29

The Council is trying to write off its loss of two stars at the hands of the Audit Commission, by saying that it is all down to the weighting given to the breakdown of of its children's services department and to its notorious failure to protect the children of this Borough. The Council also says that things aren't all bad because some of its activities, such as libraries, have received good marks.

Such an approach is akin to that of an airline which says that because it serves good food, it doesn't matter that its planes crash.

This aside, it should be noted that with one exception there have been no detailed reports for over a year on any of the services for which the Council achieved adequate scores. The exception is a report on housing allocation and homelessness, which was published in December 2008. That report, while noting that there were prospects of improvement, said that the Council provides a poor allocation and lettings service and that on homelessness the Council’s weaknesses outweigh its strengths.

Previous Audit Commission reports, of course, gave a clean bill of health to children’s services. We should not be surprised therefore, if future in-depth studies reveal that in awarding the Council good marks for some of its other services, the Commission has proved to be too generous.

Permalink Reply by Hugh on March 6, 2009 at 17:49

We've closed this discussion off since it's already taking place here.