The Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) process for Local Area Agreement (LAA) Proposals

Y&H RAF Activity on the Sub National Review and LSP/LAA process 

RAF Chair writes to Chairs of LSPs
Letter to Chairs

The Sub National review consultation has been published (March 31st)
Prosperous Places: Taking forward the Review of Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration.  Be aware if printing that it is 76 pages long. Closing date 20th of June.  

The RAF Steering Group will be responding on behalf of the RAF so please ensure we have your comments. 

June Update

Final submission and recommendations to Ministers
The GOYH submission was completed by the deadline on Friday 6th and Felicity Everiss, Regional Director had no hesitation in recommending all to Ministers for approval. This represents a huge achievement particularly when negotiations on a number of targets, such as Teenage Conceptions and Re-offending rates for PPOs, went right to the wire. Of almost 500 individual targets across the region, only 2 were not concluded at the time of the submission.

LAAs - publication and contact details
Please see following message from IDeA who have been asked by CLG to publish all LAAs on the IDeA Knowledge website:

"LAAs are to be published in full on the IDeA Knowledge website after Ministerial approval. In order for practitioners and users of the site to gain the maximum benefit from their publication, we want to be able to provide the contact details for the LAA Leads for each agreement. This will allow discussions between authorities with similar targets to start maximising the learning opportunities and sharing best practice."

GOYH intend to offer to the IDeA LAA co-ordinator contact details.

Terms of Engagement. The role of key parties in regional decision making.
A paper by New Local Government Network to stimulate debate.

May Update

The CRC (Crispin Moor) have prepared a draft response to the Prosperous Places Consultation.

April Update

Departments have been considering the March submissions from GOs. Senior Whitehall officials met on 26 March to finalise their response to proposals submitted by areas on 5 March.  Where requests for clarification have been received, these have been taken forward by GO locality managers and theme leads with the areas concerned. 

Two useful documents have been produced:
Frequently asked questions about the LSP/LAA process in its totality then click on the FAQ link in Related downloads.

Why Place Matters  and Implications for Central,Regional and Local Government..
Place is a vital element in the new process.  This document highlights some of the underpinning Communities and Local Government analysis which fed into - and supported a number of recommendations of - the Review of Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration (SNR) July 2007.  It identifies the economic reasons why place matters and uses this as a rationale for spatial policies and highlights the policy implications, including the importance of intervening at the right spatial level.

March Update on LAA activities

Govt Office YH have now received the second drafts from all 15 of our regional LSPs.  GOYH staff are now studying them in preparation for the Regional Director to report to the CLG Govt Department by 14th March.  The National LAA programme Board will consider the total national 150 at their meeting on March 25th. 

The National Indicators have been updated after the consultation.  You can download copies from www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/nationalindicatorsupdate

They are divided into four annexes:    

• Stronger and Safer Communities
• Children and Young People
• Adult Health and well being. Tackling  exclusion and promoting equality
• Local economy and Environmental Stewardship

The documents are quite weighty but do give the definitions and measuring methods which apply to localities. Basically  therefore what data one asks for  to monitor the rural performance in the mainstreamed process.

Peer Challenge Workshop Sheffield 11th March. 
The agenda is at www.laa-plus.net/downloads/B99_sheffield_agenda_FINAL.pdf.  It's mainly for officials but there is a session on Third Sector involvement

February 2008: RAF Chair

LSP = Local Strategic Partnership

LAA = Local Area Agreement 

The RAF Meeting, February 12th, included presentations by Crispin Moor of Commission for Rural Communities (CRC), Dave Melling (Bradford Metropolitan District Council) and Helen Wright (East Riding of Yorkshire Council) on rural embedding of the new LSP/LAA process.  The diversity in our region was clearly displayed by these presentations. East Yorkshire has a specialist Rural Partnership with a direct feed into the LSP, whilst Bradford relies on enthusiastic officials and interested councillors but has no formal structures.

At the beginning of February the RAF Steering Group held a seminar, led by Rob Hindle of Rural Innovation, to explore how we could make a difference. Rob has described the process in the attached paper in a way which more clearly puts our possible role into perspective. The official processes have been going on for some time and many authorities have revised their Sustainable Community Strategies and are in process of setting their 35 indicators with Government Office to sign off in May. However, there is still a long way to go and much catching up in partnership working to be done. There is also a formal review of performance due in 2009 (see paragraphs 12 to 14 of the attached paper).

This means we, the RAF, have a considerable amount of work to do to keep reminding our local authorities to concentrate policy around:

1. Locality (sense of place) needs of our Towns and Parishes and

2.  Proportionate Service outcomes for all whether urban (dense population) or rural  (sparse population)    

We worked during the seminar on positive recommendations which the RAF could follow.  These were  

1. It is important that as many RAF members as possible understand the new locality framework and what it means for rural communities.

2. It will be helpful if RAF members can engage with their LSP, ideally through involvement in the thematic partnerships in the first instance. In due course it would be extremely valuable for the RAF if members can play a part on the Executive / Board of LSPs across the region.

3. It is important to engage with local authority members involved with LSPs and LAAs. It would be helpful if RAF members who have relationships with elected councillors help them to understand the need for LSPs and LAAs to delivery proportionate outcomes across their areas, and to work for all communities.

4. It is important for the officers of the RAF to build relationships with Chairs of LSPs. The Chair should write to each LSP Chair seeking engagement and offering to support monitoring the impact of the LAA and Sustainable Community Strategy and ‘neighbourhood level’ in the rural areas through its network of membership

5. It will be useful if members can feed into the RAF officers their experiences of service withdrawal, differentials in service levels between communities etc. Real examples are very powerful aids to support the RAF in its rural proofing mission.

The workshop also considered a range of questions that people can ask of LSPs (and their partners) in a bid to ensure that their plans will deliver proportionately across the whole of their territories, and not ‘short change’ rural communities. Many of these we devised by the CRC as attached in the paper as an annex.

Support for LAAs

The GO, IDeA and LGYH have been looking at the needs that partners have identified for supporting in developing LAAs and their partnership arrangements. We are putting together a schedule of services and you can access the current version here.

This reference gives the type of training and consultation which could be going on in your LSP/LAA. It would be an extremely good result if RAF members could get involved in some of the suggested peer challenge type activities.