Local Area Agreements Reward Guidance 2009

The Department for Communities and Local Government have released the guidance on how Local Area Agreement (LAA) Reward Grant will be calculated for the new LAAs that started in June 2008.

There is a total of £340m to incentivise the achievement of LAA targets which will supplement the Area Based Grant received by successful local authorities in 2011-13.

The key points are:

• Reward will be calculated based upon average performance across the up to 35 designated LAA improvement targets agreed by local areas and government. These do not include the statutory DCSF targets in the National Indicators Set or purely local, non-designated targets
• No reward will be payable if an area’s average performance is below a minimum level
• All of the reward on offer will be payable if all targets are achieved the baselines and target levels used to calculate reward grant will be confirmed in March 2009 for most indicators
• Claims for performance reward grant will be paid in two instalments during 2011-12 and 2012-13, each with a 28 per cent capital element

The full document contains the calculations involved in judging success and a detailed a breakdown of the appropriate baselines and collection methods involved in deciding if a target has been achieved.

The full document can be downloaded here.