Factsheets about local government policy

Below are links to a range of easy-to-read factsheets about some of the key local government policies and mechanisms women’s organisations need to know about. We will be adding to these resources, so if there are key local issues you would like us to create a factsheet on, please contact Darlene by email or call 020 7324 3036.

• Greater devolution of decision making from Whitehall to local authorities and local people: Opportunities for influencing (65KB)

This factsheet flags up why devolution is important and outlines key mechanisms groups can use to influence local decision making.

• Duty to involve (99KB)

This duty comes into place in April 2009 and places responsibility on public bodies to inform, involve and engage local people.

• Local Strategic Partnerships (82KB)

LSPs are a partnership of local government, business and VCS which determine what issues are important locally and what services should be prioritised and, therefore, funded.

• Local Area Agreements (78KB)

LAAs are now the ‘only game in town’ and are the only targets central government uses to monitor local government. They are crucial to determine local priorities and funding.

• Participatory Budgeting (78KB)

Participatory budgeting (PB) directly involves local people in making decisions on the spending and priorities about local budgets, and all local authority areas should be doing it by 2012.

• Intelligent commissoning (81KB)

This factsheet describes some of the possible characteristics of intelligent commissoning, some tips on how you can make the case for intelligent commissoning with public body funders, and important sources for support and advice.

WRC has also produced guides for women's groups on engaging with local agendas.