Local Area Agreements mean a far wider role for council regulatory services especially concerning environment issues. Wendy Martin looks at how local government is adjusting to the shift in emphasis.
It is clear from the recent local government White Paper that LAAs are here to stay – and gaining in importance, with more funding and more performance measures being dependent on them.
LACORS (Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services), in its role to support local regulatory services, is due to publish the outcomes of a research project on how the LAA process impacts on regulatory services. This builds on the rough guide to LAAs for regulatory services which was published in December 2006.
There has been concern that regulatory services had no obvious ‘home' within any one of the themes. However, it has become evident that regulatory services have a contribution to make to a range targets across all four themes. There were a number of reasons given for their  successful involvement in the LAA process including:

There was also evidence that some barriers to effective engagement still existed. These included: