Information for local authorities: performance management
Local Area Agreements and waste
Local Area Agreements (LAAs) are part of the Government's devolving delivery agenda within the ten year local government strategy. They are developed by the local authority (all single and upper tier authorities) in agreement with local partners through the Local Strategic Partnership and in agreement with central Government. The Government Offices play a key role in the development of LAAs and lead negotiations on behalf of central Government. LAAs are 3 year agreements but can be refreshed on an annual basis.
The purpose of Local Area Agreements is to:
- Focus on outcomes;
- Help drive partnership working;
- Join up public services;
- Allow decision making at the right level;
- Simplify funding streams & improve the efficiency of their management.
Government has set out a wide-ranging and systematic framework of priority outcomes around four blocks:
- Children and Young People
- Safer and Stronger Communities
- Healthier Communities and Older People
- Economic Development and Enterprise
A number of these outcomes must be reflected in all LAAs – these are the mandatory outcomes and indicators set (including two on municipal waste recycling and landfill diversion). Other important local outcomes (such as on non-municipal commercial waste) make up the balance of an LAA, including those identified in the local Sustainable Community Strategy.
The two waste mandatory outcomes are:
- to reduce waste to landfill and;
- to increase recycling.
They are supported by two mandatory indicators:
- to increase the percentage of municipal waste recycled; and
- to reduce the percentage of municipal waste landfilled.
LAAs also include a reward element for the achievement of a set number of targets (usually around 10-12). This provides a financial incentive for establishing baseline, trajectory, and quantifiable improvement data (measurable improvement being linked to ‘reward’ grant). These ‘stretch’ targets replace Local Public Service Agreements (LPSAs) - (those authorities that already agreed LPSAs integrate those agreements into their LAAs).
21 LAAs were negotiated in 2004/05 (pilot round), with a further 66 LAAs signed-off by Ministers in March 2005/06 (Round 2) and this has tended to encourage more creativity in how areas have approached their LAA. The remaining 63 are currently being negotiated, to start in April 2007 (Round 3).
How do Local Area Agreements relate to Best Value for Waste?
LAAs and Best Value can be complementary. Best Value is about all authorities achieving continuous improvement across the board on household waste services. LAAs allow local authorities to use best value indicators for the household waste element but also enable an authority to improve performance on its non-household waste. LAAs also enable Central and local government to work together to stretch performance in some key areas – often using Best Value performance indicators as a baseline, as well as to identify opportunities for removing obstacles to improvement. If successful, local PSAs will add even more rigour to the challenge of Best Value by pushing top quartile performance to new levels. Best Value can provide a foundation for the authority's choice of the aspects of performance on which reward targets should focus and gives assurance that improvements highlighted in the reward target will not be won at the expense of improvements on services as a whole.
Please see the Communities and Local Government website for further details and guidance on LAAs.
Page published: 23 March 2007