62 All partnerships face obstacles to joint working: that is why effective partnerships take time to develop. Some of those obstacles are area specific (Table 4). LSPs in multi-tier areas and those areas with less experience of collaboration must work to identify and overcome these obstacles
Table 4 The impact of external factors on relationships | |
External factor | Impact |
Geography | 'We are a fairly small and compact local authority; it's easy to make partnerships work.' |
'It's very confusing for people where they ft in and how they need to be represented at local and county level.' | |
Number of partners | 'For any partnership, you have to look at relationships. Ours is small enough for it to be personal. We get business done. The whole partnership is very good.' |
'We have the leaders of each of the six district councils [on the board], and inevitably one gets a bit of the multi-tier tensions carrying over to the board.' | |
Coterminous | 'The level of partnership working is noticeable when you walk into the place and part of that is co-terminosity.' |
'We have been looking at how we interlink with the three LSPs that we serve and… that's becoming increasingly impossible.' | |
Source: Audit Commission, 2008