THAT’S a great idea. I love it. Local residents love it. Of course, we can’t do anything about it until we get Whitehall approval. Sound familiar? That’s local area agreements (LAAs) for you, reports Local Government Chronicle (Jan 19).
LAAs are supposed to make funding simpler, join up public services and make it easier to tailor programmes to local circumstances. However, a survey by the magazine found that many government regional offices — which act as intermediaries between central government and local councils — are not able to make decisions without “constantly referring to their London headquarters”.
Keeping those London HQs safe is partly the job of London’s council chiefs, LGC says in a separate story, and a few of them are feeling a bit peeved as well. Most are signed up to the gold command rota system, under which they take it in turns to be responsible for controlling and co-ordinating all the capital’s council services in the event of a catastrophe on their watch. However, some chiefs have opted out, saying that their personal commitments would take priority above work if the world went wrong . . . meaning that the boroughs whose chiefs are on call are bearing more than their share of the burden.