BURY'S top Tory has demanded an emergency meeting after the council was branded as "weak" by inspectors.

Councillor David Higgin says this "appalling situation" must be debated by all 48 councillors and not just the ruling elite.

He is dismayed that Bury has been given the joint lowest Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) rating in the North West.

The CPA scores, drawn up by the Audit Commission, place councils on one of five levels, from excellent down to poor. Of the 22 authorities in the North West, Bury is one of only four to get the second worst mark, weak. None was classed as poor.

Council leaders, as reported in Friday's Bury Times, were angry with the way that individual services had been graded.

Coun John Byrne said it was "an outrage" that one performance indicator was changed and effectively took a mark off Bury's top-rated education service, which was recognised nationally as being among the best.

And chief executive Mark Sanders said the assessment took no account of Bury's poor funding, which even the Government had now started to address.

However, Coun Higgin and several of his colleagues yesterday (Monday Dec 16) petitioned the Mayor of Bury for an emergency meeting, which could be held over the festive period.

"This is such an important issue, so it should go to all 48 members of the council where they can ask officers to explain the processes this has gone through and how the score has been arrived at," he said.

"We also want to know what the council will do to remedy this. Over the last couple of years, we have been saying that we've got to improve lots of things like the level of rent arrears and housing lettings. But they didn't take any notice and now blame everyone else for having a weak score."

Bury's "weak" rating was arrived at after assessment of two elements: how the council is run, and how its main services perform.

On the first part, Bury scores two marks out of four. The inspectors say that education is improving but there are weak areas, particularly social services for adults, housing and environment services.

The commission says that public satisfaction with the council is average, but satisfaction with individual services is below average. It says the council is ambitious, but has yet to develop clear priorities and needs to do more in human resources, information technology, procurement and partnership working.

On how well services perform, Bury again scores two out of four. The departmental breakdown is: education (three out of four); social care (three for children's services, two for adult services); environment (one mark); housing (one mark); benefits (two); libraries and leisure (three); and use of resources (three). More weighting is given to education and social care.

Ministers promise more freedoms to the best-run councils, but threaten the worst-performing with Government intervention.