Public Services Productivity Panel
Working Together: Effective Partnership Working on the Ground
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Partnerships have rightly been seen as an effective solution to dealing with issues that cross Whitehall departmental boundaries and also a way of making sure things come together on the ground. A whole host of partnerships have been set up across a range of initiatives that cover community, neighbourhood, and local authority, sub regional, regional and national issues. Government naturally favours partnerships especially where it is necessary to bring together the main power brokers typically coming from very different cultures.
The risk however is that partnerships will be seen as a panacea suitable for all public service problems which they are not. Partnerships bring with them a higher level of executive and management time than is needed in mainstream programmes. At the same time there are some issues that main stream programmes cannot readily address. Examples range from sub regional economic development strategies to national drugs problems to local areas of deprivation and so on.
The contexts and effectiveness within which partnerships operate at any one level (community, local authority, sub regional, regional or national) are significantly shaped by the super-ordinate levels within which they report. In effect there is a lack of information about where partnerships should and should not be applied and the links between the different levels of government that inhibit or promote their effective application and operation. This report explains where not using a partnership is appropriate and identifies the contextual factors and the influence that the Centre and its various partners may have on the successful working of partnerships.
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