13 January 2006
The trail being blazed by Local Area Agreements will be crucial to the contents of the forthcoming white paper on councils, the local government minister revealed this week.
'What is happening in Local Area Agreements will be one of the most important drivers of what will be in the white paper,' Phil Woolas told council leaders on January 11.
He added that his office door was open and he was keen to hear representations from across local government. 'We see the white paper as a process, not a tablet from on high,' Woolas said.
Addressing a Local Government Association conference, the minister sang the praises of the LAA initiative, which gives councils working with other public sector agencies the freedom to negotiate service delivery agreements with individual Whitehall departments and spend the money accordingly.
Woolas said that, as well as joining up services locally, LAAs prompted Whitehall to co-ordinate policies at the national level.
LGA chair Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart also spoke out in favour of LAAs, describing them as the most important change to affect public services over the next five years. 'But they're not easy,' he warned. 'Anyone who thinks they're a holy grail has got it wrong.'
Most of the authorities in the first wave of LAAs feel they are still a bit bogged down in bureaucracy, Bruce-Lockhart said. 'The potential is so great that we must be ambitious. We see some LAAs that are still a bit tick-box and not ambitious enough to bring in innovative change.'
PFjan2006
