The Local Area Agreement (LAA) is an agreement between Lancashire County Council and its partners and central government about how priorities for Lancashire will be measured and about how much improvement will be made over the next 3 years from 2008 to 2011. It replaces the previous LAA which ran from 2006 to 2008.  The new LAA is made up of a suite of measures which will deliver the outcomes that are of the greatest importance to the communities of Lancashire.

Lancashire is a large and diverse area. The LAA is an important mechanism for achieving improvements in the quality of life for Lancashire’s residents but not the only one. Actions will be taken to address priorities by different organisations in numerous other ways that support and complement the LAA but that may also tackle specific local concerns.

Through a number of consultation events, partners produced a list of priorities for Lancashire from which was established a list of measures (or indicators) which would measure how well these priorities were being addressed to deliver the outcomes which were of the greatest importance to the people of Lancashire..

The theme leads and lead partners negotiated with the Government Office North West (GONW) to establish these indicators. Targets for each of these indicators were then agreed with central government through further negotiation.

The indicators and targets can be viewed below:

The LAA will address local priorities resulting in improved services and better lives for people in Lancashire.

It will achieve this through:

• the shared commitment of partners
• partners working together and working differently
• aligning partners’ use of resources
• addressing cross-cutting issues
• adding value to the activities of individual organisations

Our key priorities relate to

• the economy,
• environment,
• education training & skills,
• health & wellbeing,and.
• community safety.

The LAA will deliver improvements in a range of areas including educational attainment and skills levels, employment rates and earnings, road safety, health, support to carers and older people, numbers of affordable homes, street cleanliness and will lead to reductions in levels of crime, teenage conceptions, carbon emissions, smoking and  alcohol and drug abuse.

The measures in the LAA have been chosen to reflect the key priorities but also to deliver the principles of our Sustainable Community Strategy “Ambition Lancashire” which are 'narrowing the gap for disadvantaged people and areas' and 'to encourage active and engaged communities and citizens’.

Thematic partnerships have been developed to lead on the development and delivery of the indicators and priorities within the LAA relevant to the theme.

The seven thematic partnerships (listed below), some of which were evolutions of the existing LAA “blocks” and related theme groups represented on the Lancashire Partnership Board, took responsibility for reviewing the results of the consultation and coordinating the assessment of relevant indicators against agreed criteria to produce a short list which reflected Lancashire’s priorities. The rigorous assessment was supported by the development of a business case for each proposed indicator which provided substantial performance and profile evidence and identified the added value from its inclusion in the LAA.  To see this information and more, direct your browser to one of the below links:

• Children & Young People
• Community Safety
• Economic Development
• Environment
• Health & Wellbeing
• Older People
• People & Communities

All major public sector organisations eg county and district councils, police, fire & rescue, PCTs, environment agency, universities, job centre plus and representatives of the Voluntary Community and Faith Sector support  the LAA and are committed to delivering against the targets set out in it. They have worked together to develop the LAA and have signed up to Partnership Agreements to deliver the actions needed to achieve the targets.

The actions taken and progress towards the targets will be monitored through the Lancashire Partnership and reported to Government Office North West.