NVSC - Newham Voluntary Sector Consortium

Local Area Agreement

March 03, 2008

The LAA Third Sector Steering Group is currently working through the Local Action Partnership Boards and the Newham Partnership Board to develop the new shape Local Area Agreement for 2008.

The Government has now published the new National Indicator Set (NIS) which all Local Authorities will be assessed against through the new Comprehensive Area Assessment. Newham Partnership Board needs to select 35 indicators from the NIS to set targets for and include in the new LAA. The 35 indicators, when finalised, will reflect a range of Newham’s concerns and priorities but they will not be the whole local story.

The future work programme for the Partnership will therefore not focus solely on the indicators that happen to be chosen for the LAA, but they do provide an opportunity for the Partnership to focus on particular priority areas, and to take action where real improvements can be made. 16 education and early years indicators have already been identified as mandatory for inclusion within the LAA by the Department for Children, Families and Schools.

Through the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA), the Audit Commission will be interested in how the indicators have been selected, the evidence used, and the engagement process with partners and the wider community.

At the LSP Conference on 24th November and the LAA Third Sector Steering Group Engagement Event on 3rd December, delegates helped to identify the shared outcomes for the Local Area Agreement and what the priorities might be for each shared outcome. Following this, each of the LAA theme areas examined what local survey data tells us about local needs and how Newham is performing compared to the rest of London as well as the results of the LSP
Conference and LAA Third Sector Engagement event in order to produce a "long list" of indicators for the LAA. This long list has been discussed at the Local Action Partnership Boards and the Newham Partnership Board, and is currently being tested against some key criteria in order to help identify the 35 indicators for the Newham Partnership Board to submit to Government Office for London in March.

You may already have been involved in selecting the LAA indicators by contributing to the LSP Conference and the Third Sector Engagement event but you can find out more at the next Newham Partnership Board meeting on the 20th March 2008.

For more details about the LSP Conference or the Newham Partnership Board,
contact Elizabeth Cuffy at elizabeth.cuffy@newham.gov.uk

For more information about the LAA Third Sector Steering Group Engagement
event you can contact Ali Ahmed - ali@nvsc.org.uk

Comprehensive Area Assessment

To simplify the way the performance of local services is measured, the Audit
Commission aims to introduce a different assessment framework in 2009. This is to be called the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) and will take over from Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA), Joint Area Reviews, Annual Performance Assessments and social care star ratings. The Audit Commission has produced two consultation papers:
• “The Evolution of Regulation” which looks at how the Comprehensive Area
Assessment might be developed
• “The transition from CPA to CAA” discussing how the transition period will be managed, but also including much of “The Evolution of Regulation” information.

For a full explanation of the changes that will take place and their impact on the Third Sector please see: nvsc.org.uk/docs/caa.pdf

How can you contribute?
Views on the proposals for CAAs are welcomed by the Audit Commission at any
time, although there will be a formal consultation, jointly with other inspectorates later in 2007. At the moment they are posing a number of
questions about the proposed new arrangements on an online form available at:
audit-commission.gov.uk/CAA.

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