3.19 Good relationships between Trusts and contractors are crucial to successful performance. Conversely, poor relationships and poor performance drive each other in a vicious circle.8 Trusts we visited which had concerns about performance did not have positive and open working relationships and tended not to see the contract as an opportunity for partnership working. Seventy-nine per cent of Trusts, however, said changes in the strength of their relationship with contractors had improved performance.
3.20 In general, Trusts and contractors have positive relationships (Figure 13 overleaf). But 32 per cent of Trusts rated their relationship with their hotel services provider and 52 per cent rated their relationship with their maintenance provider as deficient in at least one key aspect.9
3.21 Although most working relationships are strong, we did not find any that had developed beyond a traditional client-contractor relationship. We saw little partnership working, which we would define as working together to find performance and efficiency improvements that are mutually beneficial.
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8 Survey respondents assessed their relationship with their ProjectCo and sub contractors across seven key indicators of relationship strength (Figure 13 on page 32). When these results are aggregated they show a moderate positive correlation between Trusts' assessment of relationship and the performance of their maintenance, and core hotel services (cleaning, catering, laundry and portering). For maintenance R2 =0.31 and for hotel services R2 =0.31.The effect was clearer at our case studies with very poor performance and very poor relationships and very good performance and very good relationships.
9 Fifteen of 47 Trusts whose contract includes hotel services rated at least 1 statement as below 0 for their provider (where -2 is 'falls well short' and 2 'fully meets' the best practice statement). Thirty eight of 73 Trusts in our survey rated at least 1 statement as below 0 for their maintenance provider.