Literacy news

Local government accountability

21 Oct 2010

In a statement on 13 October, Secretary of State Eric Pickles announced that:

“The coalition programme sets out this Government's commitment to ending the era of top-down Government and giving new powers to local authorities to work for their communities, accountable to local people rather than central Government. In support of this approach, today I am announcing changes to local area agreements (LAA) reward grant and the national indicator set. These changes … mark the end of the old, top-down local performance framework.”

This move has been expected for some time, with accountability moving from central to local government and the communities it supports. “The Government are putting local areas fully in control of their local area agreements. This enables local authorities and their partners to amend or drop any of the current LAA targets without needing ministerial agreement. Where they choose to keep the targets,” says the statement, “central Government will have no role in monitoring them.”

For local authorities, this opens up the possibility of making their targets and priorities truly local, focusing on local need and requirements rather than nationally prescribed central government objectives. Local authorities and their partners can involve their communities directly in the creation and implementation of local service charters and community budgets – a “Total Place” style of commissioning – through neighbourhood forums and increasingly innovative online methods such as social network functions. “Asking people what they would do” is likely to become a key priority for local services, organisations and groups.

You can read the full statement by Eric Pickles MP here.

Tags: Local Authorities, Partners in Literacy, Policy

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