Look at your partnerships, report urges

27 Oct 05
Partnerships between public sector organisations risk wasting money unless there is a clear sense of what they are hoping to achieve and who is in charge, the Audit Commission warned this week.

28 October 2005

Partnerships between public sector organisations risk wasting money unless there is a clear sense of what they are hoping to achieve and who is in charge, the Audit Commission warned this week.

Governing partnerships: bridging the accountability gap, a report published on October 26, urged public bodies to take a hard look at the groupings they are involved in to ensure lines of accountability are clear.

'The government is rightly encouraging various forms of partnership to address cross-cutting issues such as antisocial behaviour and regeneration,'

Audit Commission chair James Strachan said.

'But there's almost been a headlong rush without sufficient thought to the pros and cons.'

The Audit Commission found that, although 90% of local authorities were in partnerships of some kind, just over 40% have partnership agreements.

Partnerships are less common in the health service (just under 40%), but here 80% have agreements. Some organisations admit that they do not know how many partnerships they are members of.

The commission is calling on public bodies to review each partnership they are involved in and scale down their involvement if the costs outweigh the benefits. Positions of responsibility should be clarified so they can respond properly to customer complaints.

There are also recommendations for central government, which is asked to give some thought to how the range of partnerships could be rationalised.

Strachan stressed that many partnerships work well and add value to public services. 'However, this could have been greater if all had been up to the standard of the majority,' he said.

PFoct2005

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