The Audit Commission national study ‘Working Better Together? - managing local strategic partnerships’ (PDF file, 103 pages, 1.6 MB) reviews arrangements for performance, resource management, and governance.

The report identifies local strategic partnerships (LSPs) as evolving and maturing, local and national partners still need to recognise the key dynamics that support partnership working. LSPs need to take an area-wide approach to performance and resource management. Some LSPs have well developed performance arrangements, but less developed resource management. And most LSPs have progress to make on their improvement journey if they are to deliver sustainable community strategy and Local Area Agreement (LAA) outcomes.

LSPs that have good, shared systems for performance management (with performance reporting, resource allocation, and risk management) will find it easier to show that they are on track to achieve agreed outcomes than those that do not.

The following products from the national report ‘Working Better Together?’ can help LSPs improve:

• LSP Performance Improvement Checklist (PDF file, 12 pages, 129 KB)
  Aimed at LSP members and LSP coordinators. Councils and their partners must improve performance and resource information and intelligence. This is essential for effective performance challenge. It is also essential if LSPs are to influence mainstream resources across the local area.
  
  
• Scrutiny Paper (PDF file, 12 pages, 132 KB)
  Councillors’ involvement in, and scrutiny of, LSPs is fundamental to the democratic health of local governance. Councillors can use these questions to improve LSP scrutiny.
  
  
• Governance Paper (PDF file, 12 pages, 134 KB)
  LSP boards can use this paper to review governance and test and develop their arrangements for accountability, decision-making, and reporting.
  
  
• Delivery Chain Analysis (PDF file, 20 pages, 255 KB)
  Delivery chain analysis workshops can improve the delivery planning of sustainable community strategy and Local Area Agreement targets. LSPs can run their own workshops using the materials available in the Delivery Chain Toolkit.
  
• 12 notable practice case studies
  Partnership members can use these case studies as benchmarks.
  
  
• LSP Improvement Tool
  The public sector 7S framework applied in the study can help councils and their partners build on LSP’s strengths and identify and deal with weaknesses. This online tool uses the 7S framework to aid LSP improvement planning.