How we will assess local authorities

We will follow these initial 3 stages:

1. Review evidence within the evidence categories we’re assessing for each quality statement.
2. Apply a score to each of these evidence categories.
3. Combine these evidence category scores to give a score for the related quality statement.

We then combine the quality statement scores to give an overall score and a rating for a local authority.

By using the following rules, we can make sure any areas of poor quality are not hidden:

• If one or more quality statements have a score of 2, there cannot be an overall rating of outstanding.
• If one or more quality statements have a score of 1, there cannot be an overall rating of either good or outstanding.