Title

Anna Turley looks at the realities faced by local authorities in delivering the new local area agreements. Last June, every upper-tier local authority in the country signed off their new local area agreement (LAA) with central government, setting out their local priorities for improvement in their areas by 2011. To some, these LAAs represent a ground-breaking opportunity for a truly devolved constitution – a move away from restrictive central government diktat, towards genuinely local-led priority setting, matched with hitherto desperately-sought funding, freedoms and flexibilities. To others, however, LAAs are an empty bureaucratic gesture, or ‘the best thing we have in the absence of real local powers' – according to one local authority leader, who will remain nameless. Forthcoming research from the New Local Government Network shows the reality is somewhere in between. LAAs have indeed supported a more devolved and joined-up policy framework within which local authorities and their partners are more comfortable, coherent and optimistic about the future of service delivery. There is a genuine sense that performance priorities are now more reflective of local needs, less burdensome, fragmented and top-down than their earlier incarnations, and there are promising signs that they have inspired a genuinely-new form of conversation between central and local government. However, while acknowledging we are only a few months into a three-year process, a number of concerns have already become clear to us. These focus particularly around two themes – partnership and accountability, and delivery and performance. Leaving aside some problems around the negotiation phase, which included frustration at the timescales permitted for negotiation, and at some perceptions of over-rigidity from central government departments, there remain some issues about the reality of delivery. There is unease that the national indicators remain too ill-defined and are still too top-down to support LAAs which are truly locally relevant and evidence-based. Moreover, the delivery arms for some targets, including the most popular target, National Indicator 117 – the number of 16 to 18-year-olds not in education, training or employment – still remain within the dominion of central government or quangos, and are still too rigidly controlled and inflexible. There is concern too over the current Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) consultations. Stakeholders fear the CAA will struggle to deliver on its promise, reverting instead to inflexible, siloed assessment, and that it could be subject to constant revision some months into LAA delivery. There are also widespread concerns over the systems for data collection, its amalgamation and analysis. There are question marks too, as to how sustainable some partnerships are, particularly once the realisation kicks in that reward funding is much reduced from its level under the parent LPSAs. It remains unclear what incentives and penalties there are to back up the LAA, should commitment start to drop. CAA and the threat of ‘reputational decline' may not be enough. Moreover, while the LAAs rely on a strong partnership approach, accountability for success remains obscure. But these concerns should not overshadow a genuine opportunity for local leadership in priority-setting, a potential catalyst for stronger local strategic direction, and the chance to take a step forward in the pursuit of the holy grail of fully joined-up, cohesive local service delivery. In order to overcome the challenges highlighted here, the NLGN report recommends a series of reforms and good practice actions to ensure the positive experiences of LAAs which are emerging become the norm. Among our recommendations are the following: * Whitehall should accept the primacy of LAAs where existing mandates and regulation conflict * statutory partners should increase the amount of funding they pool year on year, with bonuses paid to those showing the greatest commitment to pooling funding * the profile of the LAA should be increased among the public, with LAA outcomes published in the local media and sent to citizens with council tax bills * resource and reward systems should be in place to support the LAA, with outcomes linked to individual reward grants * cross-country alliances and best-practice groups should be formed of areas which have chosen similar LAA indicator sets – NLGN has created a web-based tool to show areas with similar LAA sets available on our website. We sincerely hope LAAs are just one part of the wider commitment to the devolutionary process, and not seen as an end in themselves. If their potential is embraced, the result should be a move away from a stifling top-down performance framework towards greater financial freedom at the local level, greater local control over priority setting, leading to improved services for local communities. Let's grab this opportunity with both hands. Anna Turley is deputy director of the New Local Government Network

Title

WHITEHALL

LAAs, signed, sealed and delivered

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING