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
59 But there are also practical problems. It is very difficult for public bodies to assess accurately the costs of shared activity because:
• corporate accounting frameworks do not offer the facilities needed for public bodies to record the full costs of partnership activities - opportunity costs and staff costs, as well as direct expenditure;
• although there are clear accounting streams for centrally funded partnership activity costs, many partnerships exist without dedicated external funding; and
• there is no common accounting framework across public bodies (still less voluntary and private sector partners).
60 Partnership governance arrangements can nonetheless set out clearly how funding is accounted for. Even where the partnership does not spend money directly, it will need to influence how partner bodies spend and it must be able to judge the impact of this funding in helping to achieve shared objectives.