Strategic Review of Manchester's Local Area Agreement
We were appointed by Manchester City Council in the summer of 2007 to undertake a comprehensive strategic review of their Local Area Agreement, including a review of the existing management arrangements. The review was undertaken in the light of Manchester's existing 3-year LAA Agreement coming to an end in April 2007, and the likelihood that the successor LAA from April 2007 onwards would be a significantly revised initiative, both in terms of resource allocation and structure.
The first phase of activity involved mapping a significant amount of discretionary resources received into various sections of the Council and the seven LAA Thematic Partnership, and then assess the impact and value-added of those resources against pre-defined LAA targets and objectives, highlighting best practice and areas for improvement along the way. There was therefore a need for the commission to be robust and transparent, yet sensitively handled. To ensure this we devised an evaluation framework which would allow us to rigorously and objectively 'measure' each Thematic Partnership's activities in a common format, to enable comparisons and benchmarks to be determined. We then applied this framework to provide recommendations to the Council about future LAA priorities and allocations, and then to make further recommendations regarding the existing LAA management arrangements, and how to enhance resource and performance management further.
As a part of this work we also reviewed the existing extent and nature of commissioning within the Manchester LAA, and gathered examples of best practice and experience from elsewhere in the UK that Manchester could also apply.
Sheffield