LAA Roadshow Update

• Greater emphasis on place-shaping and an area-based approach to service delivery;
• 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 or in partnership with others;
• There will be no more than 35 improvement targets in each LAA drawn from a new set of around 200 national indicators in addition to 18 statutory education and early years targets;
• LAAs will no longer be about specific funding for specific targets.  LAAs will now include all targets agreed with central government and delivery of the LAA will be supported by all resources in the area as determined by the local authority and partners;
• There will be fewer ring-fenced grants with a presumption that all funding should be mainstreamed or, where this is not possible, included in an unringfenced grant known as the LAA grant.  Where there are strong reasons for retaining a ring-fence these will be made public;
• A new statutory duty on the local authority to develop an LAA and duties on named partners to co-operate with the authority in its development;

The feedback from the roadshows has been captured in a report written by the Office of Public Management (OPM).  This update explains how Communities and Local Government is taking forward the issues raised. OPM provided more detailed feedback to Communities and Local Government in a presentation which we are also publishing in the spirit of openness in which we wish to develop the new arrangements for LAAs.  

Responding to the issues raised

The roadshow report highlighted a number of questions raised asking for clarification about the scope of the new national performance framework, the relationship with targets and indicators outside of it and the implications of the new statutory duties on named partners in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill.  There was also some concern about whether central government was really committed to delivering a rebalanced relationship with local government.

Communities and Local Government has established a high level Programme Board with widespread representation from local government, central government departments and others which continues to develop the new LAA arrangements.  It has also  agreed changes to the LAA reporting requirement for 07/08 to make them more light-touch and in keeping with the spirit of the commitments in ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’. 

Reducing performance monitoring requirements

These will mean changes to the annual review of performance for round 1 and round 2 areas in the Summer.  Local authorities with partners will self assess performance against the previous 6 months as part of their routine performance management of the LAA.  This assessment will be used by the partnership to feed into the discussion about priorities for the new LAA. The requirement to have a mid year review in the Autumn has been stopped.  Review meetings originally scheduled November 2007 – January 2008 will focus on agreeing the new improvement priorities based on the new National Indicator Set.

In addition, we have introduced in 2007/08 more flexibility in the way that areas can use their funding:  4 star authorities have had most if not all of their revenue allocation provided on an unringfenced basis; and all areas will be able to benefit from greater flexibility in the use of their revenue funding.

Feasibility testing the new arrangements

There was a lot of discussion in the roadshows about the practical aspects of handling the negotiating process - in the main on how to achieve the right balance of priorities on which to set targets and the roles and responsibilities of partners.  The comments are being used to steer work which Communities and Local Government is co-ordinating to feasibility test the new LAA arrangements.  There are 17 authorities and partnerships working on different aspects of the new arrangements.  Six of these are from two-tier areas and their experience will help to identify ways of accommodating the specific challenges that were raised about LAAs in two-tier areas.  Participating North West authorities are Cumbria and Oldham.

We have kicked off the feasibility testing with a workshop on 1 May; this brought together all of the areas to identify themes that need to be tested during the exercise and how that would be acheived.  The feasibility testing will continue until mid/late July and the Office of Public Management (OPM) will produce a final report of the findings of the exercise in August which we will make available.  This will be used in the development of LAA Operational Guidance.

High level briefing document

There were a number of requests for a one-page document to summarise the reason why LAAs are changing and what these changes will mean.  This document entitled ‘An overview of new Local Area Agreements’ is available on the ezine.

Frequently Asked Questions

We have produced a summary of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ which explain the issues raised here in more depth.  It also sets out the latest information available on a number of other issues which were raised in various roadshows such as Multi-Area Agreements (MAAs), Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA), and the future of the reward element.

Next steps

Communities and Local Government will be focussing on the developments arising from the feasibility testing work and taking the views of our stakeholders about the shape of the future LAA operational guidance.  Government Offices will be organising another round of roadshows in the autumn to explore the issues raised in the guidance and disseminate the experience of the partnerships involved in the feasibility testing.