Funding and Costs of Partnerships
3.21 The returns also indicated that overall partnerships in Northern Ireland receive funding of approximately £500m, with almost £250m provided directly by the 11 departments. However, this figure includes a number of large capital projects being taken forward by partnerships, and in a number of cases the funding timescale was unclear. When these figures are excluded, annual expenditure of some £231m is identified (table 8). This is likely to be a conservative estimate, given both the exclusion of the figures outlined above and the fact that a large number of responses did not provide details with regard to the funds provided. As a point of note, the EU contributes some £31million with around £21million of this destined for LSPs.
3.22 If we consider only those partnerships operating within Northern Ireland or on a cross-border basis, it is clear that the NICS Departments are the largest funders of partnership working in Northern Ireland. The greater proportion of funds, some 75%, allocated by Departments to Partnership working are allocated to partnerships working at a regional or sub-regional level (figure 4)21. This reflects the administrative boundaries of both NICS Departments and their executive agencies, but may also be accounted for by the requirement that bodies or programmes must be regional in order to access funding from Departments.
Figure 422
3.23 All the figures outlined above are considerable. However, they do not take account of the additional costs incurred by Departments through the utilisation of departmental staff in this area. From the relatively few returns that provided sufficient information to estimate time commitment with regard to departmental staff, a total of some 61,900 working days across all departments were utilised on partnership working. This is equivalent to almost 278 WTE23 employees across all grades engaged solely in partnership working. However, this figure is based on estimates provided by departments and must be treated with some caution. In addition 477 non-departmental staff were identified as engaged in supporting partnership working.
Table 8
| Number of Partnerships | Funding | |||||||||||||
| Total | Dept | Subscription | Other Gov | Non NI Gov | NDPB (include local councils | EU | Other | Total
| Staff Days | Other Staff | ||||
| DARD | 21 | 12 | 33 | £9,387,660 | £8,000 | £444,000 | £0 | £199,500 | £3,687,658 | £4,064,630 | £17,791,448
| 9459.2 | 120.5 | |
| DCAL | 7 | 5 | 12 | £91,333 | £0 | £21,000 | £0 | £55,333 | £0 | £0 | £167,666
| 1874.2 | 1 | |
| DEL | 9 | 16 | 25 | £6,435,204 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £51,000 | £6,486,204
| 9212.35 | 10 | |
| DE | 9 | 0 | 9 | £9,171,000 | £0 | £0 | £1,571,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £10,742,000
| 1583.3 | 1 | |
| DETI | 17 | 64 | 81 | £1,113,500 | £284,000 | £0 | £0 | £3,216,788 | £150,000 | £1,550,474 | £6,314,762
| 10161.5 | 51 | |
| DFP | 34 | 1 | 35 | £0 | £0 | £3,616,049 | £0 | £0 | £21,817,22424 | £827,000 | £26,260,274 | 684.5 | 86.6 | |
| DHSSPS | 96 | 105 | 201 | £35,759,937 | £9,520 | £798,600 | £97,000,00025 | £9,962,147 | £4,490,180 | £3,749,063 | £151,769,446
| 23708.14 | 80.05 | |
| DOE | 15 | 2 | 17 | £2,716,039 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £541,568 | £3,257,607
| 1332.48 | 32 | |
| DRD | 27 | 3 | 30 | £2,905,669 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £2,905,669
| 1234.27 | 35 | |
| DSD | 7 | 17 | 24 | £1,387,607 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £75,357 | £1,462,964
| 322.6 | 2 | |
| NIO | 52 | 0 | 52 | £800,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £0 | £800,000
| 1115 | 0 | |
| OFMDFM | 30 | 4 | 34 | £2,105,269 | £0 | £0 | £406,250 | £0 | £1,218,750 | £0 | £3,730,269
| 1212.75 | 58 | |
| TOTAL | 324 | 229 | 553 | £71,873,218 | £301,520 | £4,879,649 | £98,977,250 | £13,433,767 | £31,363,812 | £10,859,092 | £231,688,308 | 61900.29 | 477.15 | |
3.24 These figures demonstrate not only the commitment of the NICS to partnership working, but also reflect the fact, as outlined earlier, that partnership working is expensive and resource consuming.
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21 Geographic data was available only for £211, 557, 070, or approximately 91% of expenditure identified in Table 8.
22 The chart does not include the figure of £97m identified under non NI government funding in Table 8.
23 This figure was calculated on the basis of 223 days per annum representing the equivalent of one WTE.
24 Includes EU funding for LSPs awarded through DFP
25 This figure is accounted for by the English, Scottish and Welsh Health Departments contribution to the UK Clinical Research Collaboration. DHSSPS contribution is £3m.