MLA East of England’s work with local authorities, much of it in collaboration with our NDPB partners and the DCMS team at the Government Office through the Local Government Improving Performance Partnership [LGIPN], has included:

Regional commentaries

Spring 2007 saw the completion of nine regional cultural commentaries. MLA worked with colleagues in local authorities and regional LGIPN partners to develop a “snapshot” of cultural activity in nine of the ten top-tier authorities in the region. The resulting information has been used as evidence of performance in inspections, and has informed planning for individual authorities and for LGIPN’s future focus.

Local Government Reform – maintaining the role of Culture

The DCLG “Strong and Prosperous Communities” White Paper  http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/strongprosperous has redefined the funding and inspection regimes for local government to empower more local decision making and prioritisation.  MLA has been working to ensure that cultural services remain at the heart of building cohesive, thriving communities. This work has included developing and funding our flagship partnership event “A Place for Culture and Sport In Local Area Agreements”, as well as individual and LGIPN meetings with culture leads in selected local authorities to support planning for their LAAs. The LGIPN partnership has also been supporting Nations & Regions East in the development of a 2012 cross-cutting theme template.

Local Government Improvement

Work is underway with regional partners to support the rollout of the Cultural Improvement Strategy - launched in March 2008.  Through the Government Office, we are in dialogue with the emerging Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership to ensure that the culture sector can take full advantage of the opportunities the RIEP will afford. Work is also underway on a summer event to inform local authority partners about the strategy and to initiate a debate about the best way to take cultural improvement forward in the region. 

MLA Council has recently developed an area of its web site to bring together a range of information to support Local Authority Improvement.

The aim of these resources is to support improvement of the sector and to help MLA carry out the duty to co-operate with regard to Local Area Agreements. The resources include:
•         MLA outcomes framework
•         Case studies which demonstrate how the sector contributes to outcomes for communities
•         Library Benchmark
•         Examples of performance indicators and targets in the round 3 LAAs
•         Resources for measuring participation and satisfaction
•         Information about community profiling
•         Links to standards schemes for museums, libraries and archives
•         Advice on identifying improvement priorities
•         Links to improvement support resources
 
The MLA improvement web pages are now available at: http://www.mla.gov.uk/policy/improvement