The Future of Local Area Agreements: Speech by Rosie Winterton

The Rt Hon Rosie Winterton MP

Minister of State

Minister for Local Government and Regional Minister for Yorkshire and Humber, attending Cabinet

• View The Rt Hon Rosie Winterton's profile
• View speeches, statements or articles by The Rt Hon Rosie Winterton

The future of LAAs

Transcript of the speech as delivered.

I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to speak at the conference this afternoon, because I want to celebrate and highlight the successes we have achieved with Local Area Agreements.

And I'm especially delighted to do that here, because the NLGN has been such a strong friend of LAAs over the years, not least in the 'Deal or No Deal' publication. Chris [Leslie], thank you for your personal leadership and contribution, which has been crucial in shaping the debate.

Last year my predecessor, John Healey, spoke here about his vision for the future of LAAs. He said one way to make LAAs even more effective would be to adopt a more area-based approach to funding. Total Place is how we are going about that.

One of the great challenges facing Britain is how, at a time of tight public expenditure restraint, we can still deliver high quality public services. Services that for the individual user, look, feel and are as good, indeed better, than the ones they enjoy today.

Total Place is a crucial part of meeting this challenge head on. The willingness to map all of the public service spending going into a local area. And then to ask hard questions about the best use of that money.

And here's where the mutually-reinforcing combination of LAAs and Total Place is very important.

One focusing on priority outcomes agreed across each place and with central Government; the other driving delivery forward with a focus on efficiencies. Both about stronger partnership working, and reshaping services around users and citizens.

Frankly, saving money without better outcomes is no real saving at all. We need to ensure we can successfully produce radical savings and deliver better outcomes, responding to local needs and priorities.

This, along with an effective devolution of power, leadership and accountability to strong elected local authorities, is the key to meeting the challenges we face today.

The unique democratic mandate of Councils is absolutely crucial here. Councils and Councillors are directly elected, so they are best placed to provide local leadership and make sure public services are being fairly and effectively delivered.

LAAs are working

"They have really come into their own over the past year, as councils have used them to tackle the fallout from the global recession which has been vital in protecting their communities from its effects."

LAAs are already powering these innovative new ways of working between local partners. This innovation will be absolutely crucial in the period ahead.

They have really come into their own over the past year, as councils have used them to tackle the fallout from the global recession which has been vital in protecting their communities from its effects. The recession has formed a focus on what mechanisms exist to do this, underlining the importance of LAAs.

Informed commentators recognise their success in transforming the relationship between Town Halls and Whitehall; and, more importantly, between Government and citizens.

Independent assessments - by the Audit Commission, and a number of think-tanks, including the NLGN itself - have found they are promoting: a focus on what really matters in an area; services organised around users rather than providers; and stronger local leadership.

Across the country, LAAs are sparking bright ideas that are leading to better, more responsive, services, for residents. We want to celebrate the excellence and innovation that exists everywhere - and spread this best practice.

That's why we launched the Local Innovation Awards with the LGA Group, backed with £3 million funding.

The new scheme has got off to a great start. We have had an excellent response, with over 100 entries from more than 180 councils and their partners. The expert assessors have had a tough time picking out the strongest contenders - it was a very strong field.

But I am pleased to announce today that the Independent Panel have now drawn up shortlists in each category - identifying the entries that stand out for their excellence and innovation - and are ready to embark on the final judging process.

Details of the shortlisted entries are on the CLG, LGA and IDeA websites.

The LAA survey

"The latest official LAA evaluation survey interim results - which have not been published yet - demonstrate the strong support LAAs enjoy within local Government."

The sheer breadth and quality of the entries is a testament to the quiet revolution that LAAs are delivering. And it is especially significant that their potential has been recognised by the people responsible for making them a success on the ground.

The latest official LAA evaluation survey interim results - which have not been published yet - demonstrate the strong support LAAs enjoy within local Government. The results are striking:

• over 90 per cent of respondents say LAAs have improved partnership working among local agencies;
• 85 per cent of respondents believe LAAs have helped local authorities play a stronger place-shaping and leadership role in their area;
• over 90 per cent think that, since the introduction of LAAs, the culture among local partners has become more collaborative;
• and 93 per cent say their LAA has helped change behaviour on issues such as smoking, obesity and climate change - making a real difference to the lives of their residents.

LAAs are a powerful weapon, enabling councils and their partners to combine their firepower and improve services for the communities they serve.

LAAs and Total Place

And they underpin the aims of Total Place, by providing a mechanism to focus partners on delivery of joint objectives.

In the 13 pilot areas - and over 70 other areas undertaking similar activity - service providers are working to identify how a 'whole area' approach, bringing together all the different services in a joint effort to respond to local needs, with local authorities taking on a unique leadership role, can deliver better outcomes for users.

Waste, overlap, duplication of effort can all be cut: helping to make sure every pound of taxpayers' money works as hard as it can.

Total Place is not about trying to deliver a certain number on efficiency savings. But a one percent efficiency saving across the Local Government budget for 2010/11 alone, could see a saving in the order of £600 million.

In Essex, partners are taking their LAA as the foundation of an area-based approach to spending, developing a transformation programme to save £300 million by 2012.

Many other areas are adopting a similar approach - but imagine if it was emulated by every other area. The potential rewards would be huge. Of course, it has major implications for central government's relationship with local government.

It will require changes in the way Government manages and inspects different public services - as well as how we set targets for performance. It could mean greater alignment of performance frameworks of major services, so bodies like the NHS, the police and local government are all working towards the same goal.

And Government would also need to resist the temptation to tell councils how to spend lots of different pots of public money. The pilots will give us valuable insights into the scale of change needed.

I also want to emphasise at the national level that ministers are meeting to discuss feedback from the pilots and reflect on the changes that need to happen. I feel personally that this has been effective so far in concentrating the minds of ministers and of senior civil servants.

This approach is part of a broader, radical agenda putting strong councils in charge of leading and shaping services in their areas for the benefit of their citizens.

So how do we do that? One of the ways is through extended scrutiny powers, which will support local authorities in driving improvements in delivery; and greater use of shared services, of more innovative procurement models and joint commissioning will lead to operational efficiencies at the front line.

The road ahead

But we understand we will need to go further still, in giving local areas the flexibility to reconfigure their work around citizens rather than organisations.

For LAAs, some of the stops on the next phase of the journey are already clear.

"Looking further forward, LAAs need to be as effective and flexible as possible, reducing the associated bureaucracy and limiting the use of top-down targets, to harness their full potential."

Comprehensive Area Assessments will soon be published. This supports the locally focused, area-based approach pioneered by LAAs and now being extended by Total Place. We want to see how we can build on this, giving councils more freedom by rationalising inspection regimes to focus on delivering what really matters.

Looking further forward, LAAs need to be as effective and flexible as possible, reducing the associated bureaucracy and limiting the use of top-down targets, to harness their full potential.

So we are testing this approach in this year's LAA reviews. I am pleased to announce today that we have reached agreement, across Whitehall and the local sector, to focus this year's LAA annual review on the economic targets we promised to review - such as the level of worklessness, housing supply, and business registrations.

So where there are targets that still need to be set, we will ask local areas themselves to tell us what they can achieve instead of insisting on protracted negotiations over exact numbers.

This more trusting approach is exactly how we see LAAs developing in the future. This will help LAAs continue to improve the central-local relationship and devote our energies to delivery, as they should be.

"But how much further can we - and should we - take LAAs?"

But how much further can we - and should we - take LAAs? They are a shared endeavour so it's absolutely crucial that we take a partnership approach as we move forward. And that's why we are challenging the status quo right now and asking tough questions about the way we work:

How can Government encourage all areas to take a Total Place approach?

Can we devolve further, for example with Government stepping back from detailed target negotiations - in return for local authorities stepping forward and setting out their aims as concrete promises to local people?

I am extremely proud of what we have already achieved in establishing the new LAAs and the performance framework that underpins them. Now I want to have a dialogue with councils and other local partners, the people implementing them on the ground, to hear their ideas about how we take LAAs forward.

Because local government and its partners have made LAAs the success they are. Now my message is let's build on that to benefit all our communities.