Scribd promotion of Blackpool’s Local Area Agreement

The Blackpool LAA (Local Area Agreement) is the Blackpool Council-led document that sets out the priorities for what needs doing in the town and serves as the formal agreement between it and central government.

The LAA is an essential document that is designed to help join up local services more effectively and allow for efficient targeting of funding towards local solutions to address locally determined priorities.

As an essential document then it is vital that those people interested have easy access to it. Therefore BCN is pleased to announce that over 150 people have now formally viewed the Blackpool LAA via this website and its Scribd version of the document.

Since the launch of this website on July 1st over 1,000 downloads/viewings of featured documents have taken place.

Note: The Blackpool LAA is also available from the IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency) Website as a PDF file.

IDeA – Year of Healthy Communities – Blackpool’s SHIVER project

Year of Healthy Communities Calendar, April 2008 to March 2009 has been published on the IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency) website.

The ‘Calendar’ contains a reference to the Blackpool SHIVER project which is a sexual health project aimed at raising sexual health awareness in Blackpool’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) communities.

This financial year calendar contains 52 health improvement examples, one for each week of the year. It was produced by the Healthy Communities team, who are sponsored by the Department of Health.

The calendar starts with April 2008. At the beginning of every new month four health examples will be showcased on these pages.

The calendar emphasises where local authorities, primary care trusts (PCTs) and other services are tackling health inequalities. The six councils awarded beacon status for reducing health inequalities are also featured.

Government Neighbourhood Statistics

The Office for National Statistics provides a useful service for those seeking local information on their neighbourhood or area. Most of the material is dated, but it still provides a useful overview of an area. Visit Neighbourhood Statistics – Home Page and enter your post-code or area.

The Blackpool Local Area Agreement is also a rich source of statistical information and can be downloaded as a PDF file from the Improvement and Development Agency Website.

How Your Council Works – Community Guide

Available from Urban Forum Website

How Your Council Works: A Handy Guide for Community Groups has been produced by a collection of partners (Urban Forum, NAVCA, IDeA and The National Empowerment Partnership) to explain the workings and typical structures of local authorities.

The document was referred to in the recently published Communities in Control. It gives the legal lowdown on what councils must do in order to engage with communities and the general public.

The document, perhaps controversially to some, re-enforces a local council’s leading role in its Local Strategic Partnership.

“While it is for the partners as a whole to decide how the
LSP should be run, the Government believes that local
councils should take a leading role. This is because they
represent, through the local councillors, democratic
accountability to local people. There are also a number of
specific legal roles that councils and elected members play
that make this LSP leadership role important”

Community Leadership, Page 17.

Click the image to take you to the Urban Forum website where you can download or order the document.