Denham calls for greater use of community contracts but implementation concerns remain

Councils should sign community contracts with local residents as a way to drive up the standard of local services, the Communities Secretary has said.

Announcing a package of measures to support the move, John Denham said the arrangements should include providing redress when things going wrong.

Also known as neighbourhood charters, community contracts are voluntary written agreements between residents and local services. They are meant to set out “clear standards of service and priorities for action as well as the role local people can play in helping the services achieve this”, the Department for Communities and Local Government said.

The contracts – which are not legally binding – can cover a range of areas, including anti-social behaviour, litter, graffiti and street lighting. In terms of redress, they can specify a commitment from the council to solve the problem and even consideration of financial compensation.

The DCLG insisted that the evidence from the 11 areas piloting the contracts showed they work. The negotiation of service standards and greater scrutiny of neighbourhood level service performance had “led to a refreshing of attention to, and ‘spotlight’ on, existing standards”.

Its evaluation nevertheless highlighted a number of lessons from implementation. These include:

• For contracts to be successful, neighbourhood or locality based working needed to be in place;
• There were political and organisational risks that needed to be managed, particularly where the local authority and its executive were not in the leadership role;
• The absence of accessible and smooth running routes for reporting by residents of service and neighbourhood issues to service providers presented a barrier to the effective operation of contracts;
• There was a clear correlation between effective governance and effective contracts; and
• Contracts presented specific issues for middle managers who could be caught between their organisations’ performance targets and performance management framework and the demands of the neighbourhood contract.

The DCLG has now published guidance on how councils and other services can develop and maintain these contracts; a new discussion forum will also be made available on the IDeA’s website.

Denham said: “Community contracts are an important way for local people to tell councils and agencies about what matters to them and to get action taken on the issues that matter most to them.”