The drive to improve local well-being has always been at the heart of what local authorities and their partners do. They do this in the context of a history of place based and people based interventions by government designed to promote prosperity and protect the environment.
The government is at the head of the 'well-being delivery chain', a complex set of arrangements that runs from national to local level, involving on the way a range of organisations at regional and sub-regional level, and is also affected by European Community policies and programmes. The Local Government Act 2000 gave added impetus to promoting well-being. It introduced a duty for local authorities to prepare a community strategy for their area and it gave them the power to promote economic, social and environmental well-being.
To track progress against priorities, and see if circumstances have changed and inform decision-making, local authorities and their partners need robust monitoring arrangements. Performance indicators alone have only limited use in helping to monitor progress; the Audit Commission is now developing a more comprehensive approach to assessing the quality of life and services in a local area. The Area Profiles Project brings together a range of data and assessment layers that, taken together, provide an overall picture.
The purpose of this study, which refers to a number of case studies, is to:
- examine how local leaders match their ambitions to local circumstances
- assess the workings of the local end of the 'well-being delivery chain'
- inform the development of a methodology for assessing local authorities' contribution to community leadership and the promotion of economic, social and environmental well-being, for the next round of CPA from 2005