Bridging the accountability gap - Audit Commission

Governing partnerships | Partnerships and value for money – the costs and benefits 25
periodically. However, there is seldom an established means of identifying what resources
they are committing to partnership working, or of evaluating the costs and benefits from
working in a partnership. Few organisations we spoke to could tell us how many
partnerships they were engaged in.
‘We stopped counting when we got to 150…’
LSP manager
55 In some areas, there has been a growth in partnerships, sub-groups and meetings, often
with similar terms of reference and overlapping (but not identical) membership. This has
become a drain on resources and has resulted in duplication and inconsistencies. Public
bodies need to improve the coordination within and between different partnerships, in
order to ensure that they understand which of the mainstream services provided by their
partners already help to deliver their own objectives. This should allow them to see
whether proposed new initiatives will add value or simply overlap.
56 Assessing value for money involves taking account of all available evidence in order to
reach a judgement. Some partnerships may involve additional costs, because the
processes of negotiation and discussion are time-consuming. Others may manage to
eliminate duplication of effort and expenditure. Partnerships will achieve value for money if
they can achieve equal or better outcomes for less expenditure. To comprehend this
requires an understanding of costs and benefits.
What do partnerships cost
57 Partnership working incurs costs. If partnerships spend too much time in meetings
discussing process issues instead of focusing on achieving their objectives, the costs can
outweigh the benefits. Partners should regularly review how they work to determine
whether the outputs and outcomes merit continued involvement.
58 Almost none of the public bodies we talked to in the course of our research had tried to
calculate the total cost incurred in working in partnership. Some find the prospect
daunting:
‘We’ve never looked in detail at inputs, outputs and outcomes, and would find this
damn scary, since it would clock up big numbers.’
Director of health, PCT