RR17: Local Economic Assessments: How are local authorities rising to the challenge?

This Rapid Research gives an overview of the Economic Assessment Duty and considers some of the associated policy documents and accompanying guidance before going on to offer an insight into how local authorities are responding to the Economic Assessment Duty based on the research recently carried out by CLES. It concludes by offering a number of conclusions and recommendations arising from our research.

From April 2010, every upper tier and unitary local authority in England will have a statutory duty to prepare a Local Economic Assessment (LEA) for their locality. Despite the publication of official guidance and the opening of a consultation on the guidance, little so far has been said about how local authorities are preparing to undertake an LEA and the challenges it presents. To address this gap, this latest edition of Rapid Research sets out to uncover the views of practitioners’ on how they are going about the process and the challenges they are facing locally.

The specific areas that are explored are:

• the progress local authorities have made so far on LEA;
• key challenges encountered so far and strategies developed to overcome them;
•  how local authorities plan to undertake the LEA, and what will happen afterwards;
• understanding practitioners’ views on the Economic Assessment Duty.