15 October 2010
Local government groups have welcomed the abolition of Local Area Agreements but warned that there must be a commitment to a new relationship between Whitehall and councils.
Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles announced on October 13 that the agreements, which require councils and their partners to pick from a set of national performance indicators, were to be scrapped.
In a speech at Hammersmith Town Hall, he told local leaders:
‘I’m handing over control over more than 4,700 targets to councils and their
voters. To keep them or dump them as they see fit.
‘And instead of the national indicator set, and instead of every single
department’s endless demands that you measure this, that or the other, I’m
promising today that there’s just going to be one list of every bit of data
that government needs from you.’
David Parsons, chair of the Local Government Group’s Improvement Board, welcomed the decision. ‘This is in line with what we have been lobbying for under our “Freedom to lead” campaign,’ he said. ‘We want councils to be accountable to local people, not government or inspectors.
‘The LG Group will work with councils to ensure they have the tools and support the need to deliver improved outcomes for local people in their area.’
Andy Sawford, head of the Local Government Information Unit, said he supported the move away from top-down targets, but added that LAAs had generally been considered ‘a step in the right direction’. He told Public Finance: ‘It must be followed up with a real commitment to a new relationship between central government and councils, particularly around place-based budgeting.’
He added that collecting useful data was essential. Councils were doing this ‘in a way that is as much about the public being able to see how their services are performing as much as about central government making those judgements’, he said.
James Hulme, director of communications at the New Local Government Network, told PF that ‘for too long local government has looked upwards to Whitehall and wasted money on collating information to please central government’.
However, he added: ‘The LAA process was in itself an important process and a welcome change in approach from the national indicators [that previously prevailed]. It embodied a better “conversation” between central government and the localities, where Whitehall had to listen and engage properly with local councils, learning that they may, in fact, have different priorities and concerns from the centre.’
He said that replacing LAAs will be ‘more of a challenge to Whitehall than to local government’, as it can ‘no longer see councils as its delivery arm’.
