Local Area Agreements (LAAs) are a new way of striking a deal between central Government, local authorities and major local delivery partners in an area. More information on the National Picture.
New Local Area Agreements
The White Paper ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’ published in October 2006 set out fundamentally different arrangements for LAAs. LAAs will provide local authorities and partners with the flexibility and capacity to deliver the best solutions for their areas through a reformed relationship between central and local government. New LAAs will be introduced from April 2008 meaning that LAAs will be the only place where central government will agree targets with local authorities and their partners on outcomes delivered by local government on its own and in partnership with others.
New LAAs will mean
- more emphasis on area based service delivery - a package of measures which mean stronger partnership working, alignment of local government performance management arrangements with that of partner agencies and replacement of authority-based inspection with an area-based assessment of risks to service delivery (The Comprehensive Area Assessment);
- more freedom in spending decisions - the local authority will be able to make decisions about spending priorities with partners locally without these being conditioned by centrally imposed targets. Budget 07 reinforced the commitments in the Local Government White Paper 'Strong and Prosperous Communities' to reduce the number of specific grants. The presumption will be against ringfencing grants unless there are strong reasons for doing so and these will be made public.
- fewer central targets and reporting systems - the new LAAs are part of radical reforms to replace the multiple national performance frameworks under which local authorities operate with around 200 national indicators. These will cover everything local government does on its own or in partnership with others. Each LAA will have no more than 35 negotiated (designated) alongside 18 statutory education and early years targets. There will be a single annual performance review to examine the findings of the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) and respond to changing priorities in the area;
In addition the passage of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill will place a statutory requirement on the local authority to develop an LAA and duties on named partners to co-operate with the authority. Councils will also be able to agree local targets with partners that will not need to be reported to central government but which will have the same status as targets negotiated with central government.
An indicative timetable for the negotiation of the new LAAs is provided below.
Local Area Agreement Dry - Run
Suffolk were one of 17 areas working alongside GO-East, Communities and Local Government, other Central Departments, the Local Government Association and Audit Commission to feasibility test the process for developing new look LAAs. Feasibility Testing workshops were held as part of this process, with an aim of sharing ambitions, understanding the issues and designing an approach to the testing. The final report of the LAA Dry - Run is available below.
