94 Managing partnership performance is increasingly important and we have found some examples of good practice in the course of monitoring partnership activities (Case study 6). A recent validation exercise on the performance management frameworks of some LSPsI showed that:
'… they have made significant progress in implementing performance management systems. This is a notable achievement, given the complexity and sensitivity of developing performance management in a partnership context. It marks a further stage of development in the life-cycle of LSPs and demonstrates a level of organisational maturity, which is reassuring given their relative youth.'
Case study 6 Aylesbury Vale District Council is developing performance management across its partnerships. Regular progress reporting of partnerships takes place, including through the member with portfolio responsibility for partnerships, annual updates from elected members on outside bodies and progress reporting on specific partnerships through to Cabinet. The Council's performance appraisal system also identifies where an individual's work relates to partnership working and sets specific targets. Source: Audit Commission, March 2004 |
95 But other partnerships still find performance management difficult. Common weaknesses include:
• weak alignment between partnership and corporate plans, targets and delivery; poor links and coordination between partnerships and between umbrella partnerships and their sub-groups; lack of formal arrangements for partnership representatives to report back on partnership activity;
• a lack of monitoring or evaluation of the effectiveness and impact of partnerships; limited use of impact or outcome measures; inadequate use of SMART action plans, targets and indicators; progress monitoring and reporting tends to focus on input and activity targets rather than outcomes;
• a lack of monitoring or evaluation of the contribution of partner organisations; limited opportunities or willingness to challenge the performance of partners or give feedback on their performance in partnerships; and
• underdeveloped arrangements for the scrutiny of partnerships by corporate processes.
96 Many partnerships have incompatible or inadequate systems for generating the information needed to establish baselines, milestones and targets and to track progress. Slippage against partnership plan targets is difficult to manage and it is hard to share good practice across partnerships and across partner organisations.
'If you've got something in your partnership agenda that's not measured centrally and you've got something outside of that structure that is measured, which do you put your resources into?'
Police chief inspector
Case study 7 Performance management has continued to develop and the Council is currently rolling out its computerised performance management system. The system now includes links between priorities, objectives and targets and all service plans and performance indicators are modelled using this system. The LSP has adopted the same performance management system as the Council, enabling seamless reporting against community strategy themes and corporate objectives. Source: Audit Commission, 2005 |
97 Effective performance management in partnerships will bring to the surface local tensions and national contradictions. Local tensions arise from partners' mutual interdependence. Organisations collaborate partly because it will help them to achieve standards of performance that they would not attain otherwise. As the performance management frameworks for partnerships become more rigorous, they will show that some partners are failing to perform to the required standard.
'We're terribly dependent on [partnership working]. Last year [a key partner] failed to achieve their targets …I think they achieved something like 85 per cent of their targets. Members need to know that a key government agency has actually not served the City terribly well. Having said that, this also raises some awful tensions for us because X is actually a very good partner and we understand why they haven't performed, but there is a public accountability issue nevertheless.'
Head of regeneration, metropolitan borough council
98 National contradictions often arise from conflicting national targets; for example, a PCT can charge the local authority for each day's delay in finding a care place for an older person who is deemed medically fit to leave hospital. But one director of social care in a local authority described how greater integration had resolved this problem:
'The whole culture of fining another organisation when you are also saying to them "work together in a partnership way" is two completely different messages . . . We're so integrated that the Director of Service Development is a joint appointment across the local authority and the PCT. He manages the budget, so in fact he would be fining himself. So we've sort of leapfrogged over this.'
99 In less well-integrated partnerships, various national targets can have a different effect. Inevitably, chief executives of public bodies will pay greatest attention to the problems for which government will hold them to account. The chief executive officer of a one-star PCT faced the prospect of the trust being downgraded to zero stars because it was unlikely to meet its waiting list targets. The local LSP manager appreciated that, despite the chief executive's personal commitment to partnership working, he needed to direct most of his efforts towards achieving the targets for which he was to be held personally accountable.
100 It is easier to achieve trust and goodwill when little is at stake. When partners must hold each other to account for mutually agreed standards, targets or outcomes, then it is easy to strain goodwill and lose trust.
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I The Audit Commission undertook a validation of those LSPs in receipt of over £10 million in Neighbourhood Renewal Funding (NRF), as well as those that had been identified as having the furthest distance to travel and facing the greatest challenge in meeting key floor targets and who were therefore in receipt of extra (or residual) NRF - a total of 60 LSPs nationally.