Comprehensive Area Assessment fails to cut council workload

CAA was introduced to make inspections more efficient so that councils would need to be inspected less.

But 90 per cent of local authorities say CAA has done nothing to reduce their workload.

Almost two-thirds of councils are also worried that CAA does not focus on the future of services and seven in 10 think the inspectorates are failing to co-ordinate CAA effectively.

The LGA is now calling on the Audit Commission and local government minister John Denham to encourage better joint working between the inspectorates involved in CAA.

David Parsons, chair of the LGA Improvement Board, admitted that it is too early to draw definitive conclusions about CAA, but said the survey results raise questions about the "relevance and longevity" of the new inspections.

He said: "Despite the considerable effort we are putting in to respond to endless requests for information, it's not clear that the inspectorates' assessment of the area is going to tell us anything we don't already know. In an era of financial constraint CAA is going to have to demonstrate its value for money - and at the moment we are not convinced."

Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, said it would take time for CAA to bed in.

"We are engaged in a pioneering effort to join together the assessment of local services and value this feedback from both elected members and officers," he said.

CAA inspections are conducted by a team of seven inspectorates, including the Audit Commission, Ofsted and the Commission for Social Care Inspection.

The first CAA inspection reports will be published in December 2009.