By Anika Bourley Parliamentary Correspondent

Last updated 14:15, Thursday, 03 July 2008

Tackling hospital admissions caused by alcohol, reducing the number of people injured on county roads and getting people to stop smoking are among the top priorities for Cumbria council chiefs.

Along with encouraging people from different backgrounds to get on together, council chiefs also want to further reduce reoffending in young people, get more youngsters from deprived backgrounds into higher education and provide more affordable homes. The Government ordered officials to draw up a list of the most pressing issues to get them to “concentrate their efforts” on local concerns.

While performance will be measured across the whole range of 198 indicators, targets will only be set for the 35 chosen as top local concerns.

Under the Local Area Agreements (LAA) scheme, extra cash from a £340m pot of funding will be available to the highest performing councils.

Also included in Cumbria’s priorities is raising satisfaction with the area and pushing the green agenda, including reducing CO2 emissions and waste and improving street and environmental cleanliness.

Chairman of the Cumbria Strategic Partnership, Bill Lowther, said: “The LAA for Cumbria was agreed after consultation with public, private and voluntary sector partners throughout the county.

“The opportunity to reduce the number of official targets and focus on the issues that really matter is a welcome one and we have concentrated on achieving results in areas that really matter for Cumbrians, including public health, unemployment, crime, road safety, climate change, waste, cleaner streets and housing.

“The areas outlined in this LAA will help achieve the outcomes prioritised in Cumbria’s Community Strategy, a 20-year vision for the county being unveiled this summer.”

Nationally, the most popular priorities set by councils were tackling joblessness among 16 to 18-year-olds, reducing teenage pregnancy, providing housing, protecting the environment and cutting child obesity.

The local targets are agreed with central Government after consultation with bodies such as local police, health service and job centres.

Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said: “These new local priorities mean that councils and their partners can concentrate their efforts on the specific needs of the local people they serve. The prizes are enormous: better, more locally relevant public services, a higher quality of life and ultimately more prosperity in communities across the country.

“If knowledge is power, then this is more power to local people. They will be able to see exactly what local government and service providers plan to do in their area, check out how well they are doing, and ask questions if they have not delivered. This means more freedom for local authorities to deliver what local people want.”

The Tories criticised the targets saying they were the concerns of Whitehall bureaucrats and not local residents.