Governing Partnerships: Bridging the Accountability Gap urges local public bodies to take a much harder look at whether the partnerships they are involved in are delivering.
Partnerships are a significant feature of public service delivery. At the last count, around 5,500 partnerships existed in the UK, accounting for some 4 billion of public expenditure.
Key findings were that local partnerships are essential to deliver improvements in people's quality of life, but:
- They bring risks as well as opportunities, and governance can be problematic.
- They may not deliver good value for public money, so local public bodies should ask.
- Searching questions about those they are engaged in.
- Clear accountability is needed between partners to produce better accountability to the public, including redress when things go wrong.
Local public bodies should be much more constructively critical about this form of working: it may not be the best solution in every case. Local public bodies should consider:
- How do partnerships add value?
- Who is in charge of partnerships?
The assessment of risks and benefits in partnerships is most finely balanced when service planning, commissioning and delivery between separately constituted bodies become more integrated.
There is no one size fits all model of governing partnerships: governance arrangements should be proportionate to the risks involved. Partners must strike the right balance between the need to protect the public pound and ensure value for money, and the innovation and flexibility that can exist when organisations collaborate.