Recent inspections

Recently we have been subject to several intensive inspections of our services.

Adult Services:

Supporting People Programme rated as 'excellent'

In 2007 we became the first county council in England to be given the highest possible score by the Audit Commission for our Supporting People programme. The commission rated it as an excellent programme with Excellent prospects for improvement. This was based on strong partnerships with colleagues in district councils, probation and health; positive relations with providers; our long-established committment to involving service users; the strong and ambitious leadership of the programme; the high level of support and ownership of the programme among both elected Members and senior managers; and the positive track record in delivering improvements despite a reducing budget.

Children’s Services:

The Annual Performance Assessment (APA) 2007 has confirmed that Children’s Services are making a good contribution to improving the lives of children and young people in Hampshire judged against the five Every Child Matters outcomes.

The Joint Area Review (JAR) and the enhanced inspection of the youth service also found that in all of the areas of investigation the County Council and our partners are making a good contribution to improving the lives of vulnerable groups of children and young people across the county. In some aspects, services were judged to be outstanding. In particular, the JAR concluded that we have highly competent staff across all of the services, that we have strong management and leadership throughout, that our partnerships are working very well, and that there is a good relationship between schools and the local authority in the delivery of Every Child Matters.

The Joint Area Review 2007 judged that we make a good contribution to ensuring that children and young people achieve economic wellbeing with very good provision for young people aged 14-19 achieving high success and participation rates in most areas.

Adult Services:

Adult Services performance against the CSCI Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) indicators continued to improve in 2007/08 for the second year in a row with 90% of the indicators improving on the previous year’s performance and 76% exceeding plan.

In November 2007 Adult Services were awarded 3 stars by CSCI following our annual performance assessment; this included an ‘Excellent’ rating for leadership and use of resources

Recreation & Heritage

The Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) 2007 Culture block performance score was announced in February 2008.  A high level of library user satisfaction from the annual PLUS, a low cost per visit for libraries (£2.50) and increase in school sports participation to 88% ensured that Hampshire achieved 6 upper thresholds and no indicators below the lower threshold to achieve the top score of 4 for the Culture block.