Supplementary memorandum from the Local
Government Association
THE WORK
PROGRAMME AND
LOCALISM
- Local enterprise partnerships will play a key
role in promoting the conditions for private sector growth and
job creation in local economies. One of the Government criteria
for the new partnerships is that they should broadly conform to
natural economic geography.
- The LGA lobbied for Work Programme contract package
areas to follow local enterprise partnership geography—to
help bring together the support for job creation with the support
to help people secure jobs. But the contract package areas
in the Work Programme "Invitation to Tender" follow
a different geography even where the local enterprise partnership
has scale—such as the Kent/Essex/East Sussex "super-LEP".
- Nevertheless local councils and local enterprise
partnerships can play a significant role in the success of the
Work Programme—helping to manage and scrutinise performance,
co-ordinate activity with other public services, provide local
information about economic development and share premises to reduce
cost. DWP have yet to describe the role they expect local enterprise
partnerships to play in the Work Programme.
COMMUNITY BUDGETING
- The Government has announced 16 community
budget areas to focus on complex families. These families
present a high cost to the taxpayer and helping them resolve their
problems has significant social and economic returns—to
the family, the wider community and the taxpayer. Since these
families are in contact with and receive support from a wide range
of public services, there is a strong case for a much more co-ordinated
approach, which is now taking place in many authorities through
family intervention projects.
- A significant part of the costs associated with
these families are benefit costs. DWP should therefore be a
major contributor to the community budget—but as yet there
is no evidence of a financial contribution.
LOCALISATION OF
THE SOCIAL
FUND AND
WIDER ISSUES
- The Government has proposed the localisation
of elements of the Social Fund—crisis loans and community
care grants. As a stand-alone measure, it transfers significant
financial risk to councils when unemployment is rising and a change
in benefit entitlements is more likely to increase the number
of people on benefits requiring additional financial help. It
also assumes the responsibility can be bolted onto local authority
social service departments who support a very different client
group.
This only makes sense as part of a wider localisation
of the face-to-face interface with citizens who have more complex
benefit claims, when online or telephone
handling will not be appropriate.
January 2011
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