Today the new way of assessing councils has been launched by the Government and the first reports are all online.

Unfortunately, they aren’t comparable to the old star ratings: they measure totally different things in totally different ways and have a different scoring system too.

Stockport’s reports are here (if the site is back up).

My one-sentence summary is that Stockport is healthy, green, safe and economically strong compared to others, but needs to do more to improve our poorer areas.

As with all assessments, there will be long arguments about whether it’s measuring the right things and whether it’s getting the right answers – both questions on which it’s too early for me to draw any conclusion.

People might also be confused by what the green and red flags mean.  “Green” is does not mean good.  It means that a service is exceptional and something special and different is being done that other Councils need to learn from.

In other words, many councils will be running good services, performing well and meeting the needs of local people without getting green flags (as is the case for Stockport).

The Conservatives have already said they will abolish the website if they come to power.

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