Cheshire's Local Area Agreement (earlier LAA developments - 2007)

 

One of the main tasks of the Communities of Cheshire Partnership (CCP) is to oversee the development, negotiation and delivery of the Local Area Agreement for Cheshire. The Cheshire LAA will help deliver priority outcomes which require the support of many partners and partnerships. Some of these actions require partnership working at the wider sub-regional level and others will be based in Cheshire’s six districts. The LAA is set to become the action plan for the progression of Cheshire’s Sustainable Community Strategy which is based around the following six themes, each with clear and challenging targets to achieve shared outcomes and objectives:

• Safer & Stronger Communities
• Children & Young People
• Older People & Healthier Communities
• Economic Development & Enterprise
• The Environment
• Innovation and New Ways of Working

However, in delivering the local actions to achieve the agreed priorities in Cheshire, the LAA will concentrate on fifteen headline outcomes, selected because of their ‘cross-cutting’ nature - that is, they address more than one of the above themes when delivering local services. The headline outcomes will be co-ordinated and managed by the most appropriate thematic partnership associated with the services involved.

The outcomes include mandatory ones, those put forward by district LSPs, those in the Safer, Stronger Communities Funding (SSCF) Agreement and the second round of Local Public Service Agreements (LPSA) and their correlation with the draft Cheshire Sustainable Community Strategy.

Next Steps

Cheshire’s headline outcomes are being further developed to produce a detailed list of sub-outcomes or activities to deliver the higher level outcomes over the next three years, commencing April 2007.

Before those actions are implemented, a number of key processes need to be achieved. In addition to the production of a detailed action plan, partners in Cheshire also need to produce a ‘Statement of Community Involvement’. This section of the LAA will contain details of how Cheshire’s multi-sector partners and partnerships will continue to work together to provide improved results.

The development teams have also been asked to submit a brief contextual statement for each block to support and evidence the agreed outcomes, sub outcomes and proposed activities to be undertaken within the LAA. This will establish the need for the intervention and why it is of importance. The draft Agreement must include an explanation of proposed arrangements for performance management, reporting and monitoring. This work is being progressed through the multi-agency ‘Cheshire Performance Management Practitioners Group’.

A cross-agency 'Finance Officers Group' to explore and agree protocols for dealing with the financial aspects of the LAA is under development. Further, work will be undertaken to develop an understanding of how the existing funding streams can be aligned or pooled, to better delivery services outlined in the LAA. A GONW ‘Integrated Appraisal Toolkit’ will be used to measure and challenge the positive and any potentially negative impact of the LAA.

The first formal draft of the Cheshire LAA will be submitted to GONW in order to be forwarded to the respective Government Departments to approve the detail of the document and our partnership working. This document will be launched with the Communities of Cheshire Partnership stakeholders conference on 27th September 2006 in order to gain further approval. It will then be processed through the GONW ‘Quality Assurance Checklist’ to ensure all relative aspects are covered effectively. This process is due for completion by 16th October 2006.

Following submission at the end of September 2006, further work will continue with the LAA to produce a final document to be submitted to Whitehall on 22nd December 2006. This will seek final Ministerial approval early in the New Year 2007. A tremendous amount of work will continue behind the scenes within and across each of the thematic areas to develop the final LAA by mid- December. A number of writing / working groups will continue to meet over the autumn period to build up the detail underpinning the outcomes framework.

The Cheshire LAA will be implemented from April 2007, for three years, until April 2010. However, there will be annual LAA re-fresh mile-stones which will provide the opportunity to reflect upon our progress and make any necessary changes to our Agreement.

Current indications of the future of LAAs from April 2008 include information on:

"Developing the future arrangements for Local Area Agreements" document (CLG)

portable document format (383 kb)

"Comprehensive Area Assessment" presentation (Audit Commission)

portable document format (113 kb)

"Implementing the New Performance Framework and LAAs" presentation (CLG)

portable document format (123 kb)

"LAAs - Driving Improvement: a new performance framework for localities " presentation (IDeA)

portable document format (146 kb)

Negotiating New LAAs (CLG)

(200kb)

LAA Dry-run Negotiations (CLG)

(544kb)
   

The Lead Officer for Cheshire's Local Area Agreement is Lisa Green, Customer & Local Relations Manager, 01244 972211.