Local Area Agreements as a tool for addressing deprivation within UK cities

Despite a plethora of urban regeneration interventions introduced by UK Governments over the last 20 years, variation remains in respect of levels of deprivation that exist within many urban areas. This paper focuses on the extent to which Local Area Agreements (LAAs) — as a new management tool for addressing local needs through collaborative working — are able to identify and respond to such variation in the UK. The research highlights that LAAs’ ‘management by targets’ approach, where localities are required to select, negotiate and implement a relatively small number of centrally driven indicators and outcomes in order to improve performance, may not be fully conducive to addressing variations in levels of deprivation. In turn, the paper compares/contrasts similar approaches elsewhere in the world and, in so doing, draws out a number of wider ‘lessons’ for enhancing innovation and knowledge exchange in urban regeneration management.