Just doing a quick straw poll to find out if any advice agencies or WRUs have managed to secure any involvement, or even better any inclusion for advice, within their Local Area Agreements.

If you do have any thing you could share about this please let me know, either through the Board or by email.

For background info on LAAs, please see the rightsnet policy news stories Local area agreement toolkit and Local authorities sign off Round Two Local Area Agreements

So that's a no then?

On a more postitive note, would anyone be interested in finding out more about LAAs and their implications for locally-sourced funding of advice and information services? Have an idea for something like a good-practice-guide but am wondering if there is any interest.

Hi Paul

I would be imterested in further info', in particular, where and how would the provision of welfare rights advice and representation fit into this.

Regards
Paul

I would be interested too

Sorry for not expressing an interest earlier, but I have been out winning all my appeals this week.
I would be very interested.

(Looks like Merseyside is interested then)

Yep! Thats us gobby scousers for ya!

Lets hope you're all shouting tomorrow. Got a scouse mate coming to stay tonight and I've told him I'm shouting on the Irons to provide a balance.

As for the more banal LAAs, thanks for the expressions of interest, we're hoping to obtain a little bit of funding to produce a good practice guide which will provide some background and developments to date, implications for VCS agencies generally with a more-advice specific focus on top of that, along with suggestions for how to get more involved in drafting LAAs and any case studies we can find. We're thinking it will resemble the Regeneration and Renewal Guide produced by Lasa and networks a few years back. Watch this space for more news.

I'm hoping that anything we can produce will be free to relevant advice network members, altho we may have to make a small charge for other agencies e.g. LA WRU's (sorry Paul) - altho this will depend to a large degree on what, if any, funding we can get for this idea.

Anyone else with any thoughts, ideas, or especially experience of drafting LAAs and outcomes, then please feel free to add them in.

Durham County council Welfare Rights have a LAA. If you want more info contact Chris Graham.

Thanks Scott, presumably I can get hold of Chris via you? Currently waiting on initial decision from funders.

We have a LAAgreement under one of the blocks on Healthy Communities and Older People.

The stretch target that we negotiated on was to improve the lives of people in County Durham by increasing take up of Council Tax Benefit.

We have an agreement to fund one WRO for a three year period to increase the take up of Council Tax Benefits for Older People.(note the selection of this area of work was not of our choosing).However we were in the very rare position to be approached to apply for the funding and do the work with partners.

Part of the reason for the inclusion of this work as a stretch target was the ability to produce baseline figures from the DWP on the levels of take up within the County.

Six weeks back there was slight hiccup as to how we might receive the money and how it might be spent(capital/revenue i.e posts) but this has been ironed out.

We have been fortunate enough to work with partners to be able to start the work on the take up earlier than anticipated and have the launch of the campaign in one of the seven districts (two tier authority!)in the Easington area involving the local MP on 23/6/06.

Good stuff, thanks for the update Chris. Will be interesting to see how this progresses, you're one of very few agencies that I am aware of that have been successful in inclusion in the LAA's developed to date, so would be good to find out more about your project in due course.