What assessment has the Welsh Government made of the effectiveness of outcome agreements with local authorities in delivering value for money for Welsh taxpayers?
Outcome Agreements were voluntary agreements between the Welsh Government and individual Local Authorities. Authorities received a grant for achieving the outcomes in their agreement. The funding was conditional on the provision of satisfactory evidence of performance against the agreed outcomes for each authority.
The first round of Outcome Agreements ran from 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2013. In 2013-14, all Authorities in Wales subsequently concluded new Outcome Agreements with the Welsh Government. These agreements set out the actions and measures each Authority would take over the period 2013-14 to 2015-16 and the improvements they would deliver to secure five outcomes, each of which would contribute to the Welsh Government’s Programme for Government.
During this period an evaluation was undertaken of the first round of Outcome Agreements, which concluded that while the agreements had been felt to increase accountability it was difficult to say conclusively if the Outcome Agreements had led to improvements in performance. This, along with the changing landscape for local government performance and improvement, led to the decision to discontinue the Outcome Agreement scheme after 2014-15.
There was a full transfer of the funding that had been associated with them into the Revenue Support Grant.