Plymouth’s Local Area Agreement 2008

Plymouth’s Local Area Agreement 2008

Plymouth, along with every other Unitary and Upper Tier Local Authority, has been required to submit a new Local Area Agreement (LAA) to Central Government under the new Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. The final draft of the LAA was submitted on 30 May 2008 and agreed by the Secretary of State in June 2008. In March 2009, the LAA targets were refreshed to ensure all gaps are filled and to take account of any changed circumstances. The refreshed LAA was agreed by the Council’s Cabinet on 17 March 2009. The updated table is now available to download from the documents table below.

Our new LAA sets out the key priorities and targets for Plymouth over the next three years to deliver the short to medium term priorities of the Sustainable Community Strategy.

Under the new arrangements for Local Area Agreements, Plymouth City Council and its partners have selected 33 indicators drawn from the new National Indicator Set (NIS), together with 20 locally defined indicators. The new LAA builds on the development work undertaken to complete Plymouth’s first LAA (2007 to 2010) and many of the arrangements already in place will be continued and further developed as appropriate.

The LAA table

Available in the documents table below is the final version of Plymouth’s LAA together with the refreshed targets table. The LAA targets table sets out the choice of indicator, the baseline position and the targets to 2011. The 33 national indicators chosen from the NIS are designated targets and must be formally agreed with Central Government. Local non-designated targets do not have to be reported or agreed with Government, although they must be submitted as part of the final LAA.

The 33 designated targets are intended to be the only performance targets agreed between Central and Local Government. Performance against these designated targets will form part of Plymouth’s assessment under the new Comprehensive Area Assessment in 2009.

Existing stretch targets

Alongside the new LAA, Plymouth has an existing commitment to the 12 stretch targets agreed as part of our Local Area Agreement 2007 to 2010 and these will continue to be closely performance-managed under existing arrangements to ensure the full draw-down of Performance Reward Grant. Government is also still committed to these targets which sit outside of the new LAA. These are included within the document which can be downloaded from the documents table below.

How did we choose the LAA indicators?

The 23 priorities set out in the first column of the LAA have been drawn from the Sustainable Community Strategy although the wording has been refined to aid clarity following consultation with the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) Forum, LSP Board, Executive and theme groups

To ensure that priorities also take account of any more recent work, the choice of indicators has also been influenced by the recent reviews of a number of key strategic documents:

• The review of the Children and Young People’s Plan
• The Community Safety Partnership’s Strategic Assessment
• The new Health, Social Care and Well-being Strategy
• The Council’s Corporate Plan 2009 to 2012

The choice of indicators has been developed with key members of the four LSP theme groups and the Children’s Trust and the choice of priorities been challenged in some detail at a well-attended LSP Forum event in December 2007.

A cross-partnership task and finish group was established by the Executive Group of the LSP to develop and rationalise the wording of the priorities and narrow the choice of NIS indicators to the 'up to' 35 required for the LAA. The final refreshed table incorporates any changes made as a result of the refresh process.

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Governance and accountability

The governance and accountability diagram in the document below sets out the governance arrangements for the new LAA. These do not differ significantly from those arrangements already in place under the existing LAA. At a practical level, there will be more comprehensive performance reporting of the LAA to the Council, whereby all LAA targets will be reported rather than the stretch targets as at present. It is expected that this will take place twice a year at six-monthly intervals.

Equalities and diversity

Equalities and diversity is being addressed through the LAA in two main ways. The first activity builds on work already in place for the LAA agreed in 2007. Each of the targets set out in the LAA will be supported by a delivery plan and these plans will be the subject of equalities impact assessments. This work has been supported by the Council’s Social Inclusion Team and ensures that at the most appropriate level, the impact of the activities being planned to deliver the improvements required are being assessed for positive and negative impacts on different service users. Alongside the development of the LAA, we are working with colleagues in the Social Inclusion Unit to build our knowledge of the changing communities within Plymouth.

What next?

Detailed delivery plans have been completed for each of the LAA indicators and will be reviewed to update them. They will then be published on the website.

Learning resources

We want to help you understand and get involved in the business of the LSP. These learning resources aim to help you if you are working directly with us and help inform you for your own business. The government has published extensive guidance on the new National Indicator Set and Local Area Agreements which can be accessed directly from the Department of Communites and Local Governement website.

Government Office for the South West provides policy advice, examples of good practice from other Local Authorities and is hosting regional network meetings for Local Authorities in the South West.

We are also a member of the LAA Plus Network. More information on this network can be found on the IDeA website.

More information will be updated on these pages as the LAA develops.

Documents

To view these documents you might need to download some software. Visit our downloads page for more information.

	Plymouth's Local Area Agreement 2008 to 2011 - securing the future for generations to come: Plymouth's Local Area Agreement 2008 to 2011. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 629.3KB
	Plymouth's Local Area Agreement targets refresh 2009 - securing the future for generations to come: Plymouth's Local Area Agreement 2008 to 2011 refreshed targets table. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 104.4KB

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