National targets and indicators for local government

• Local Area Agreements (LAA) set out priorities for improvement in a local area, agreed between national and local government.
• Multi Area Agreements (MAA) are voluntary targets set across local authority boundaries to define sub-regional priorities.
• National Indicators: Local Authorities (LA) and their local strategic partnerships (LSP, where this exists) are expected to choose up to 35 performance benchmarks from a pool of 198 national priorities/ indicators. Performance of local authorities will be assessed solely on this basis by the Government.
• No national indicator has been set to measure renewable and low carbon energy, but several indicators relate to climate change and emissions reduction. Around two-thirds of authorities have adopted NI186 on per capita CO₂ emissions.
• Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA) will be introduced in April 2009 and will include an annual publication of performance in each area against the national indicator set.

See monitoring and review.

• www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=1174195
• www.audit-commission.gov.uk/performance/