Redcar and Cleveland's first LAA was signed off in March 2007 and ran for one year until March 2008. For details regarding the first LAA, please contact Katy Austin (details below).
The Government's White Paper 'Strong and Prosperous Communities', which was published in October 2006, set out fundamentally different arrangements for LAAs in order to 'provide Local Authorities and their partners with the flexibility and capacity to deliver the best solutions for their areas through a reformed relationship between central and local government'.
New LAA's, introduced in April 2008 mean 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 or in partnership with others.
- LAAs will no longer be about specific funding for specific targets. Because they will now include all targets agreed with central government, delivery against the 35 + 17 improvement targets is now effectively supported by all resources in the area.
- There will be a new unringfenced area based 'LAA' grant, with a presumption that all area based funding would go through this route unless there were very strong arguments for retaining a ringfence. This grant will have no performance reporting or other conditions attached.
The new LAA supersedes the old LAA and runs from April 2008 - March 2011 (signed off by the Secretary of State in June 2008). It is based around 5 themes:
- Children and Young People
- Safer Communities
- Stronger Communities
- Healthier Communities
- Sustainable Communities
The new LAA has allowed Local Authorities, and their partners, to choose up to 35 indicators, drawn from the new National Indicator Set, that reflect the priorities in their local area. The Council, after full and extensive consultation with the Redcar and Cleveland Partnership, agreed on 35 indicators that are based on sound evidence and that reflect the areas that we most need to focus on improving.
In addition to these 35 indicators, we are also required to include 17 statutory education and early years indicators and can include as many 'local' indicators as we want. We have made the decision to include the current 13 stretched indicators (those where we signed up to more ambitious targets which if achieved, entitle us to performance reward money) as our local indicators, which will continue from the old LAA, in order to ensure we retain the focus on our priority areas. We have also included the Tees Valley Multi Area Agreement (MAA) indicators within our local set.
The final LAA was submitted to Central Government and signed off by the Secretary of State in June 2008. It is subject to an annual refresh, the first of which was carried out and signed off in March 2009.
The LAA can be downloaded using the link below.
For more information on the LAA, please contact Andy Brown: (01642) 444416 or email: andy_brown@redcar-cleveland.gov.uk
