Salford Agreement
Please note: The Salford Agreement came to an end on 31 March 2011, the long-term vision for the city is described within the Sustainable Community Strategy and a set of Partnership priority objectives and actions have been developed for 2011-2014.
The Local Area Agreement (LAA, known as the Salford Agreement) was submitted, approved and signed by the Secretary of State in 2008 and was revised ('refreshed') annually to reflect the changes in the economic climate.
Below are links to the refreshed Agreement document submitted to GONW and adopted by the Secretary of State together with the confirmation letter from Government Office North West.
Final Salford Agreement Refresh 2010 (PDF)
Confirmation letter from Government Office North West
The Agreement was intended to boost the city's public services and in turn help local people to achieve their ambitions.
What was the Salford Agreement?
The local area agreement between Salford and central government set challenging targets to be achieved between April 2008 and March 2011.
With the involvement of all strategic partners, we chose 23 priority issues for the city which were at the centre of our business. These included concerns such as the level of worklessness and anti-social behaviour, and opportunities including MediaCityUK. Success on issues like these made a major difference to people's lives.
Our partnership priorities
Our chosen priorities were:
| Smoking | Obesity |
| Alcohol | Teenage pregnancy |
| Older people | Safeguarding vulnerable adults |
| Fear of crime | Anti-social behaviour |
| Higher education | Parenting |
| Providing affordable homes | Raising educational attainment |
| Reducing the number of looked after children | Community cohesion |
| Community engagement and empowerment | Child poverty |
| Worklessness | Basic skills |
| Developing mediacity:uk | Growing and developing business |
| Climate change | Environmental attractiveness |
| Ensure services and transport developments are coordinated |
Measuring success
For each priority, we agreed one or more indicators - these were used to measure our improvement.
We agreed 35 indicators from the Government's national indicator set (a list of 198 indicators which the Government agreed to be a national priority) for our Agreement. These were described as designated and the Government monitored our progress towards them.
The remaining 32 indicators in our agreement are described as supporting. Some were from the national indicator set while others were devised locally. The supporting indicators were just as critical as the designated ones, but were only monitored locally.
The agreement also contained 10 statutory early years and education indicators.
Targets for each indicator for the three year duration of the agreement were negotiated and local partners were signed up to achieve them.
Salford Agreement performance information
Performance reports were presented to the Salford Strategic Partnership Executive quarterly.
Named partners
The Salford Agreement names certain partners for each target - either as a lead partner or an organisation that will make a definite contribution to that target. These partners include:
| Salford City Council | NHS Salford |
| Greater Manchester Police | Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company |
| Jobcentre Plus | Skills Funding Agency |
| Northwest Development Agency | Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service |
| Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce | Salford City College |
| University of Salford | Salford Council for Voluntary Services |
| MIDAS | Greater Manchester West Mental Health Foundation Trust |
| Probation Trust |
Other partners were not specifically named in the agreement, but, as this was the statement of our city's priorities for the next three years, they were asked to contribute where they could.
What about concerns and opportunities that weren't in the LAA?
It's important that we deliver on all of the city's objectives in the current Sustainable Community Strategy. The Agreement priorities were chosen because they were issues where we needed to make a significant improvement and where partnership working could make a real difference over the three years.
The remaining objectives would continue to be addressed by the city's thematic partnerships and individual organisations.
Joint Strategic Commissioning
The delivery of the priorities within the Agreement was the responsibility of us all. Some were delivered by single organisations whereas others required collaborative working to ensure we maximised our achievement and at the same time do this in the most efficient way possible. For example, the objective of reducing teenage pregnancy rates was not the responsibility of a single partner but involved many of us in preventative exercises such as education, improving access to contraception, reducing teenage drinking of alcohol and others. It was best to join up our activities to make sure the best approach was delivered. To do this we created a Joint Strategic Commissioning Framework.
The Framework is still in place and is based on a continuous cycle with four phases: analysing, planning, doing and reviewing, each as important as the other. Through this process it is expected that the partnership will achieve:
- High quality integrated services, with shared outcomes that meet the needs of all who are intended to benefit from them
- Better value for money
- Greater capacity to deliver more integrated services.
What Next?
In 2010, with the release of the Government's Programme and the development of the Greater Manchester Strategy it was agreed that a set of Partnership priority objectives and actions for 2011 to 2014 be developed. These will supersede the Agreement.
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