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What are Local Area Agreements |
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The LAA is a contract between central government and localities to deliver the priorities of local people. It involves all partners in a locality agreeing to work together to find better solutions to local issues. The agreement is based on agreed outcomes and central government is supposed to remove the bureaucracy around multiple funding streams and allow local freedom and flexibility.
LAAs operate over a 3 year time scale and involve negotiations with the regional Government Office acting on behalf of government as a whole. The LAA provides localities with a real opportunity to agree on outcomes and to pool resources whether these are derived locally, regionally or from central government.
Outcomes must fit into 4 blocks
- Children and Young People
- Safer and Stronger Communities
- Healthier Communities and Older People
- Economic Development and Enterprise
A locality can agree to develop outcomes around other groupings of priorities - for example environmental and sustainability issues. The local area agreement will cover the entire county of Warwickshire.
What are the aims of Local Area Agreements?
The aims of LAAs include
- To improve central: local relations with a view to developing a more flexible and responsive relationship between central government and a locality on priority outcomes that need to be achieved locally.
- To improve service delivery and address complex funding arrangements from a variety of sources which can result in excessive administrative costs and uncertainty about the long term sustainability of projects.
- To improve partnership working - the LAA process should bring together a range of partners at a local level deciding on priorities for a locality.
- To enable local authorities to provide better leadership - including making local services more accountable to locally elected members. This will be achieved through strong leadership, citizen engagement and service delivery.
What are the ingredients required for a successful Local Area Agreement?
Information available from the pilot phase of LAAs shows that
- The LAA process is a real challenge to the effectiveness of local partnerships - many saying that their partnerships were "destruction-tested" but often improved as a result of the process. Partnership must be at the heart of the agreement.
- It must be based on a rigorous evidence base relating to local issues and the solutions offered.
- The LAA should be ambitious with all funding streams included unless there is a strong reason not to.
- It should be built on outcomes that local people would recognise as making a real difference to the quality of their daily lives.
- It is wise to treat the LAA as a permanent feature - not an agreement limited to a 3 year life span. It should be seen as an organic document that is built up in practical stages over a number of years.
- The LAA has to include clearly stated outcomes, indicators and targets and must make clear how performance will be managed and measured.
Overall, pilot authorities have said that it helps to be ambitious - creative thinking about local issues is essential as LAAs can provide the chance to crack problems that have never been solved before.
Does the LAA bring with it any additional resources?
LAAs do not themselves bring in additional resources to the area. However, there is clearly an intention to rationalise existing funding streams through the LAA and to help areas to lever in matched funding. Money already coming to Warwickshire from the Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA2) is included in the LAA as a "reward element".
The process of developing the LAA should bring with it the opportunity to pool resources between agencies, develop joint commissioning of services and focus them as far as possible on front line delivery of services to local people and communities.
What is the future of Local Area Agreements?
The Government see LAA’s as the cornerstone of the future development of local government and the public sector in general. The Local Government White Paper ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’ places great emphasis on Local Area Agreements and in some instances seeks to expand the scope and powers of partners to work together to address common priorities. Key areas include:
- A maximum of 35 targets in the LAA plus 18 statutory DfES targets
- A strengthened role for LSPs for setting the strategic vision for the area – Councils to play a leading role
- An enhanced partnerships role for Councillors
- Streamline processes for involving citizens in the creation of the LAA
- Ensure existing partnerships are manageable in number
- Encourage the development of Multi Area Agreements (MAAs)-allowing different local authorities to come together and tackle cross boundary regional issues such as environmental issues, transport and economic development.
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