To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what plans she has to increase the powers available to local strategic partnerships. (77107)

LSPs, outside those areas receiving neighbourhood renewal funding, are currently entirely voluntary and therefore do not have any powers of their own.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now Department for Communities and Local Government) undertook a consultation “Local Strategic Partnerships: Shaping their Future” from December 2005 to March 2006 which looked at the future of all LSPs, focusing on their role, accountability and capacity. As part of this consultation we proposed formalising the role of LSPs and ensuring the involvement of key agencies through establishing duties to co-operate with the local authority on named local delivery agencies. The results of the consultation are now being evaluated and decisions on whether this legislative option will be pursued will need to be taken in due course.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many local strategic partnerships are chaired by (a) an hon. Member, (b) a councillor, (c) a directly-elected mayor and (d) a representative from the (i) public sector, (ii) voluntary sector and (iii) business sector. (77181)

Outside areas receiving neighbourhood renewal funding, LSPs are voluntary partnerships and hence are not monitored on an individual basis by the Department. However, we do evaluate all LSPs on a national basis and therefore are able to give indicative answers to these questions. The last evaluation of LSPs was conducted in 2004 (National Evaluation of Local Strategic Partnerships: Report on the 2004 Survey of all English LSPs ODPM 2005). This indicated the following split in LSP chairs:

The question as to whether MPs or directly-elected mayors chaired LSPs was not specifically asked.