19 January 2007
A leading council chief has condemned as 'bizarre' the decision to exclude schools from the list of public bodies required to co-operate with Local Area Agreements.
Michael Frater, chief executive of Nottingham City Council and chair of the Lifting Burdens Task Force, said the government's 'education, education, education' mantra had led to a culture where the Department for Education and Skills had come to view itself as distinct from the rest of government.
Frater told a Local Government Association conference on LAAs on January 11: 'The DfES behaves as though it's different. We have to acknowledge that it's an organisation within an organisation and sees itself as a separate part of government. That schools don't have a statutory duty to co-operate [with the LAA] just strikes me as bizarre.'
The local government Bill puts local authorities and their partners under a duty to co-operate in agreeing LAA targets and to have regard to meeting them.
However, James Blake, head of local agreements and partnerships at the Department for Communities and Local Government, told the conference that the local authority was the major education conduit in terms of the LAA and the government had wanted to avoid duplication.
In his address to delegates, Frater touched on the work of the Lifting Burdens Task Force, established by Ruth Kelly last year to slash the red tape councils have to contend with.
There was a growing recognition that the aggregate level of burden had got too much, he said, adding that the task force was undertaking a series of dialogues with different parts of government.
He also said that the task force needed to leave a long-term legacy behind it. 'When we finish we need to leave in place something that stops the whole [burden of over-regulation] from growing up again.'
PFjan2007
