Bridging the accountability gap - Audit Commission

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Governing partnerships for better
accountability
72 Chief executives and non-executives often complain of multiple accountabilities in their
corporate roles. Partnerships may compound their difficulties further, because creating
internal and external accountability mechanisms is more complicated.
73 Before partnerships can provide effective external accountability to the public, they face
the challenge of ensuring that effective accountability exists within the partnership. The
principles of good corporate governance apply with equal force in partnerships, but there
are particular governance challenges in achieving effective internal and external
accountability.
Mechanisms for accountability
74 If we examine the four components of accountability identified in recent research for the
ODPM (Table 1) (Ref. 15), we see that corporate bodies have many more established
procedures and mechanisms for accountability than do partnerships. This is why
partnership working can often expose organisations to greater risks.
‘…The same principles of governance apply in partnerships as in large institutions,
but it is more onerous to implement them and the difference must be recognised.
Not all elements of the way that the individual institutions work can be made to
operate in an identical fashion in partnerships. If you were to get that, then almost
certainly there would be a good reason for not having a partnership, but having an
integrated institution.’
Local authority chief executive
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Governing partnerships | Governing partnerships for better accountability