What's involved

Local Management Agreements - a fresh approach
Local Management Agreements are a new way of tackling a familiar challenge – how to make areas safe, pleasant places to live, with local services that really work and match people’s needs. They’re a simple and easy way for people to take charge of their local area, which complements the more formal options available under The Right to Manage. See ‘Is it right for you?’

A Local Management Agreement is:

• A ‘fast-track’ way of giving residents direct control over local services, without too much heavy-duty structure and bureaucracy
• A flexible model that can be adapted for different services, in different settings
• A fair, legal and effective way of running services, in line with wider Government policies of encouraging choice, control and empowerment for communities.

Example: you and your neighbours want to take over the gardening, caretaking and cleaning services for your estate. Under a Local Management Agreement, the Council will pay you to either do the work yourselves, or employ someone else to do it.

Local Management Agreements can be a stepping-stone to other types of resident control (for example, a Tenant Management Organisation or stock transfer).

Although Local Management Agreements mainly focus on housing services, we will consider requests from local people to take over other services provided by the Council (for example, environmental or leisure facilities).

How Local Management Agreements work
Local Management Agreements give residents control and flexibility over:

• What services are provided to an area
• Who provides them and how
• How services are paid for, and what happens to any surpluses or losses.

So, residents can choose to provide a service themselves as a group, choose one or more suitable people from the area to do it, or engage a contractor or supplier. Whatever you choose, the key is to be really clear about what you’re doing, why and how. This way, it’s easy to see if the Agreement works or not, and to put proper checks and controls in place to deal with any problems. These details are all set out in the Local Management Agreement between residents and the Council.

Which services?
Local Management Agreements have been designed and tested primarily with housing services in mind, for example:

• Cleaning of communal areas and window cleaning
• Caretaking
• Communal gardening and grounds maintenance
• Minor repairs.

But they can also be used for other services like:

• Recycling
• Security
• Running community centres and other local facilities.

Thinking it through
Local Management Agreements can have indirect or knock-on effects to other Council services (for example, refuse collection or Council Tax and service charges). So, when the Council negotiates an agreement, it will look carefully to see how this might affect other activities and check/agree things with all the relevant Council departments and other agencies.