The primary objective of an LAA is to deliver better outcomes for local people.
The Local Government White Paper declared the Government’s ambition to create strong, safe and prosperous communities throughout England through a new agreement between central government, local government and their citizens. Underpinning this ambition, a new local performance framework, with a single set of indicators, has been developed. The New Performance Framework: Single Set of National Indicators.
Local Area Agreements (LAAs) are at the heart of this new local performance framework and contain the only measures on which central government performance manage outcomes delivered by local government - working alone or in partnership with others. LAAs are a three year document identifying the priorities for an area and helping to deliver the ambitions for the place and its people as set out in the locality’s Sustainable Community Strategy. Each LAA contains a maximum of 35 improvement targets (plus any number of local improvement targets) setting out the negotiated agreement to improve services and the quality of life for local people.
The LAA is also a shorter-term delivery mechanism for the Sustainable Community Strategy, which provides the story of the local area and should therefore articulate the longer term ambition, evidence and rationale beyond the focus of the three-year LAA period.
On 30 June 2008 the Government signed a total of 150 Local Area Agreements (LAAs) with local councils and their partners – 19 of these in the South East – with unique pledges to local people to improve public services and the quality of life for people living and working in the area concerned. The nineteen LAAs in the South East were reviewed and refreshed in March 2009, with Ministerial approval, to reflect the latest negotiated position.
Roadshows
GOSE has hosted a number of events in the region for local authorities and their partners to communicate the objectives and format for Local Area Agreements. Roadshows, held on 1 and 7 October 2008, provided an opportunity for statutory and third sector partners to reflect upon the progress towards the Government’s ambition to create strong, safe and prosperous communities (improving the quality of life and better public services) through a new settlement between central government, local government and citizens. They offered an opportunity to:
- Reflect on the successful negotiation of 19 LAAs across the region and on the implications for the refresh and annual review of those agreements
- Explore the recent introduction of the Community Empowerment White Paper: Communities in Control – Real People, Real Power
View the presentations and report from the events.
Reward
The Government has set aside £340m for local authorities and their partners to incentivise performance across LAAs and to recognise the achievements of local partnerships in delivering ambitious targets.
The reward guidance explaining the new model and method of calculating Performance Reward Grant entitlement was published in February 2009.
Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA)
The Local Performance Framework established a fundamentally new relationship between Government Offices, the Audit Commission and Improvement and Efficiency South East (IESE) in respect of performance management. In moving to the delivery phase of LAAs there is a need to ensure the roles and responsibilities of councils and their partners, central Government departments and inspectorates are understood.
CAA will be an innovative way of drawing together independent information to show how well residents are being served by their local public services. It will give people a clear and impartial assessment of how successfully local organisations are working together to improve the quality of life in their areas. CAA will help people to hold their elected representatives and public bodies to account, and make the most of their opportunities to influence local decisions.
In January, March and June each year inspectorates will update their view of how well local areas and organisations are meeting the needs of local people, whether outcomes are improving and whether priorities are on target to be achieved. In September/October, inspectorates will jointly draft assessments and share them with the local partners. They will agree and report their findings publicly in November. Through this process, CAA will help drive improvement throughout the year rather than only through annual public reporting.
The CAA framework was introduced in April 2009 and the first reports from the Audit Commission will be published in November 2009. More information can be found by accessing the Audit Commission website.
