A SECRET quota system dumped Bury into the fourth division of council competence.

That's the claim of town hall bosses, after the Audit Commission branded Bury as a "weak" council.

Labour leaders also blame a last-minute change in how data was counted for its demotion from the middling "fair" category.

But opposition councillors accuse them of "shooting the messenger" instead of getting on and improving things.

"This council is in a state of denial," said Tory councillor Roy Walker at Thursday's (Jan 9) emergency meeting. "You're like a school head teacher that wants to abolish Ofsted for getting a poor report.

"Putting our heads in the sand and saying the commission doesn't know what it's talking about: is this the way to make friends and influence people?"

However, council leader John Byrne poured scorn on the way that Bury's Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) had been scored.

"We were downgraded from three stars in education to make way for others because there is a quota system in operation -- a system which only the DfES and the Audit Commission knew existed," he said. "This was only confirmed after an insistent phone call by one of our MPs."

Coun Byrne said he had a letter which said that, because seven councils had their ratings improved, seven had to be downgraded.

He bemoaned the fact that the commission had not taken into account the amount of Government money councils receive. He said that Bury, if funded to the same extent as most "excellent" councils, would receive up to £52 million extra.

Councillor Steve Perkins, executive member for lifelong learning, said Bury's education performance went down by one star because of one area: the amount of time it took to complete statements of special educational need.

He said that, months after Bury had compiled those figures in the way it usually does, the inspectors had imposed a late change in data counting, which brought Bury's performance down.

But Coun David Higgin, Tory leader, said: "The people out there don't want to hear excuses being trotted out, but what you are going to do about it. They want to hear that in 12 months' time these weaknesses will be remedied."

He acknowledged that some councils like Blackburn received more money than Bury, but said they had more problems of deprivation than we had.

His Tory colleague, Coun Dorothy Gunther, added: "The ruling group would be far better employed in facing up to the problems that exist and finding solutions to them. We can have all the money in the world, but if we cannot manage that money then it's absolutely no use."

But the Labour leader retorted: "The audit commission has chosen to criticise us, so we have a right to say what we think about them.

"I admit there are weaknesses, and we work with the district auditor every year to address those. However, there are a lot of strengths in this authority, but the audit commission chooses not to measure these."

Coun Wilf Davison, Lib Dem leader, described the CPA system as seriously flawed.

"It's a narrowly based judgement using an approach which was thrown out in education many years ago," he said.

"It's a crude attempt by central government to maintain its control of local authorities. The 20 per cent of staff time put into this report and its aftermath could have been more productively used."

Despite Tory opposition, Labour and the Lib Dems passed a motion of "no confidence" in the CPA system. They complained it was not transparent, not open to challenge, and was capable of manipulation: neither does it take into account how much money councils receive

"It's a swizz and that's putting it very mildly!"

That was MP David Chaytor's comment on discovering that the CPA scores were being determined by a quota system.

"The council has been very hard done by," said the Bury North backbencher.

"I had a long phone conversation with the relevant official in Ofsted about this, and it became clear to me that they had decided that a proportion of councils would graded excellent, so many at good, etc, just like the old A-level exams, where only so many kids could get a grade A regardless of the marks they got."

Mr Chaytor added: "I'm totally in favour of a tough inspection regime for councils, but these assessments have to be strictly based on precise criteria rather than on establishing a pre-determined number of how many councils will be in each category.

"The Audit Commission has been lax in not spelling out clearly how the indicators would be used and what the banding system would be."

Mr Chaytor said he had also made "forceful representations" to Ofsted concerning the late change in the data counting which effectively downgraded Bury.

Bury was one of only four councils in the North West to receive a "weak" CPA rating: none was given the lowest "poor" rank.

Inspectors gave Bury two stars out of four on how the council was run, and the same mark for how well its main services performed overall. The departmental breakdown was: 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).

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

Bury has reluctantly decided not to seek a judicial review over the CPA system.

Mr Mark Sanders, council chief executive, said that there was no point in spending money on a legal challenge when there was no satisfactory remedy, even if the council won the argument.