- Conference
- 2008 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 25 February 2008
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that the world of local services in England is undergoing major change as a result of recent legislation affecting local government and local public transport.
Councils and health trusts, police authorities and youth services, the Environment Agency and passenger transport authorities have to get together to plan, deliver, and monitor and commission services.
In particular, primary care trusts and local authorities must produce a ‘joint strategic needs assessment’ covering future social care needs.
The government, which calls this fundamental change “a new settlement between central and local government and citizens” is to issue statutory guidance. The proposed guidance and new acts introduce a whole new world in which service delivery will take place, and a whole new language to cover it.
In the government’s own words, the guidance covers “local strategic partnerships, sustainable community strategies, the new duty to involve, local area agreements, the revised best value regime and commissioning”.
The focus on commissioning is likely to drive the further development of market mechanisms in local public services and joint commissioning across organisations as in the recent situation in Somerset county.
The government’s plans for delivering local services introduce a whole range of new bodies and terms to the public service landscape. The key features of the new landscape are:
Local Strategic Partnership – bringing together public bodies in the local area alongside the community and voluntary sector and local businesses;
Sustainable Community Strategy – the strategic long-term plan for an area;
Comprehensive Area Assessment – a new performance management system, with 198 ‘indicators’ covering not just local authorities, but all areas where they are working in partnership;
Local Area Agreement – sets out locally agreed performance targets that councils and partner organisations aim to meet.
The Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears said: “Local authorities will see their role change to strategic planners and commissioners of services, while involving ‘partners’ and ‘stakeholders’ in “developing and delivering a shared vision for their area”. At the centre of this new vision will be the local strategic partnership, and the government is clear that this will involve more than councils and other public service bodies – representatives of local people, alongside business and the community and voluntary sector are key to the government’s plans.
‘Best Value’ is more likely to be achieved where there is a positive approach to achieving a “mixed economy” of service delivery, rather than where any one supplier dominating the provision of services. “Local authorities will generally be better able to meet their best value duty by adopting a commission role … making use of all available resources – without regard for whether services are provided in-house, externally or through various forms of partnership.”
As well as community, business and voluntary sector representatives, there is a long list of statutory partners who should be involved in the new strategic partnerships, which should:
1) play a leadership and governing role in identifying local needs and arbitrating competing interests;
2) co-ordinate ‘community engagement’;
3) produce the Sustainable Community Strategy and Local Area Agreement;
4) review and manage performance against the agreed targets.
The actual duty to produce a strategy and area agreement ultimately rests with the local authority, but it must seek collective consensus through the strategic partnership.
Councils should play a leadership role and initiate the local strategic partnership that should have an executive board, led by council executive members. Apart from the involvement of local authorities and NHS Trusts, metropolitan passenger transport authorities, the Environment Agency, 18 other authorities providing various local services are included.
The local area agreement sets out the ‘deal’ between central government and local authorities and their partners to improve services and the quality of life in a place. It is also the shorter-term delivery mechanism for the goals set out in the sustainable community strategy, which will cover longer-term (10-20 years) targets.
The local agreement must at least set out:
a) proposed local improvement targets;
b) which organisations will help deliver each one;
c) the period for which it will have effect (normally three years).
Conference further notes that the legislation affecting the provision of local transport includes this approach being adopted by metropolitan transport authorities, but as its main elements are:
i) giving local authorities the right mix of powers to improve the quality of local bus services;
ii) giving local authorities in our major conurbations the power to review and propose their own arrangements for local transport governance, to support more coherent planning and delivery of local transport;
iii) updating existing legal powers so that, where local areas wish to develop proposals for local road pricing schemes, they have the freedom and flexibility to do so in a way that best meets local needs.
Public passenger transport provision is likely to be controlled by individual local authorities in various forms of partnership rather than the structures our members have been familiar with and have worked under.
Whilst the main benefits of new transport legislation are intended to be: better bus services in areas that choose to take advantage of enhanced powers, a more coherent approach to local transport in our major conurbations; and in areas that want to introduce them, local road pricing schemes that are tailored to local needs, and that are consistent and interoperable from the motorist’s perspective; this nevertheless highlights the government’s change of direction in pushing for road pricing in advance of improved passenger transport. A complete reversal of what was proposed in 1997.
In the light of all these changes to service provision structures affecting our members Conference calls on the National Executive Council to:
A) campaign against the imposition of local road pricing in advance of improvements to the provision of public passenger transport and a revision of the road fund licence and fuel tax regime;
B)call for the creation of a Staffing Commission, similar to that set up for the big local government re-organisations of 1966 and 1974;
C)arrange for a joint lobby of the appropriate Ministers;
D)seek the advice and assistance of Labour Link as to what practical progress can be made to safeguard s