partnership working in rural regeneration · 2015. 7. 13. · working in partnership those involved...

PPP R E S S

The•POLICY

Partnership working in ruralregenerationGovernance and empowerment?

Bill Edwards, Mark Goodwin, Simon Pemberton and Michael Woods

First published in Great Britain in July 2000 by

The Policy Press

34 Tyndall’s Park Road

Bristol BS8 1PY

UK

Tel no +44 (0)117 954 6800

Fax no +44 (0)117 973 7308

E-mail [email protected]

www.policypress.org.uk

© The Policy Press and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2000

Published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by The Policy Press

ISBN 1 86134 274 8

Bill EdBill EdBill EdBill EdBill Edwwwwwararararardsdsdsdsds is a lecturer in the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, MarMarMarMarMark Goodk Goodk Goodk Goodk Goodwinwinwinwinwin is Professor

of Human Geography in the Instiute of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Simon PSimon PSimon PSimon PSimon Pemberemberemberemberembertontontontonton is Area

Initiatives Officer for Wrexham County Borough Council and MicMicMicMicMichael hael hael hael hael WWWWWoodsoodsoodsoodsoods is a lecturer in the Institute of Geography and Earth

Sciences, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publishers.

The JJJJJoseph Rooseph Rooseph Rooseph Rooseph Rowntrwntrwntrwntrwntree Fee Fee Fee Fee Foundation oundation oundation oundation oundation has supported this project as part of its programme of research and innovative development projects,

which it hopes will be of value to policy makers, practitioners and service users. The facts presented and views expressed in this report

are, however, those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation.

The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and contributors and not of The University

of Bristol or The Policy Press. The University of Bristol and The Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property

resulting from any material published in this publication.

The Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality.

Cover design by Qube Design Associates, Bristol

Front cover: background and right photographs of the Welsh Valleys kindly supplied by Phill Rushen; left photograph kindly supplied by

www.johnbirdsall.co.uk

Printed in Great Britain by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, Southampton

iii

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Contents

List of tables, boxes and figures ivAcknowledgements vExecutive summary vi

1 Introduction 1Partnership working in rural regeneration 1Defining partnerships 2The research project 3

2 Characteristics of rural regeneration partnerships 5Identifying the practice of partnership working 5Initiation, duration and focus of partnerships 6Funding partnerships and sectoral representation 9Summary 10

3 Organisation and structure of rural regeneration partnerships 11Partnership organisation and effectiveness 11Issues in partnership formation 11Enrolment of partners 16Community engagement 18The organisation of partnerships 21Summary 24

4 Working in partnership 25Introduction 25Experiences of working in partnership 25Towards best practice in effective partnership working 39

5 Partnerships and rural governance: implications for future strategy 44Resources and funding 44Scales and places of operation 45Empowerment and accountability 46

References and further reading 48

Appendix A: Case study partnerships 51Appendix B: Characteristics of partnerships responding to the questionnaire survey 56

iv

TablesTable 1 The structure of partnerships in Mid Wales and Shropshire 8

Table 2 Analysis of the published aims and objectives of a selection of illustrative partnerships 14

Table 3 Community engagement by partnerships 20

Table 4 A checklist of effective partnership working 43

BoxesBox 1 The six case study partnerships 4

Box 2 Good practice – the Market Town Initiative 15

Box 3 Strategic selection of partners 17

Box 4 Reasons for individuals’ participation in partnerships 18

Box 5 Case studies – community representation 22

Box 6 Case studies – committee structures 23

Box 7 Advantages and disadvantages of partnership working 26

Box 8 Funding roles 27

Box 9 Delivery partners seen as ... 28

Box 10 Problems in partnership working 30

Box 11 Organisational problems in partnership working 31

Box 12 Ineffective partnership working 32

Box 13 Constraints on partnership practice 34

Box 14 Key issues in the operation of partnerships 36

Box 15 Commitment and ownership in partnerships 37

Box 16 Adaptability and adequate resourcing 37

Box 17 Territorial competence and local specificity 38

Box 18 Key factors in effective partnership working 42

FigureFigure 1 The growth of partnership working in Mid Wales and Shropshire 7

List of tables, boxes and figures

v

We would like to thank all those individuals andorganisations who gave of their time to respondso willingly to all our enquiries, either in person,on paper or by telephone and e-mail. The openand frank discussions we had with partners gaveus interesting and varied perspectives on theexperience of working in rural regenerationpartnerships and we have sought to maintainconfidentiality in reporting on these exchanges.Finally, we would also like to thank all themembers of the project Advisory Group who wereinvolved in a series of very helpful consultativemeetings throughout the two years of the project.

Acknowledgements

vi

Partnerships have emerged over the past 15 yearsas a commonplace feature of rural regenerationstrategies. Their development has been promotedby a range of policies operating at the European,national and regional scales. Yet little is knownabout how rural regeneration partnerships work inpractice, or about their success in achieving theirobjectives and about the obstacles to effectivepartnership working.

This report presents the findings of a two-yearresearch project examining the processes ofpartnership working in rural regeneration. Thekey characteristics of some 150 partnerships wereidentified, and a detailed questionnaire sent to 50of these. In addition almost 70 interviews wereconducted with those involved in six case studypartnerships, and meetings of these were alsoattended. Data was gathered on the organisation,form and working culture of partnerships; theirstaffing and resources; their initiation andevolution; and on the attitudes and experiences ofpartnership coordinators and partnershipmembers. Some key findings have emerged.

Partnership formation

The growth of partnership working in ruralregeneration has not produced a newhomogenised form of governance institution – ‘thepartnership’ – but rather a diverse andcomplicated set of organisations with differentfocuses, different scales of operation, differentdurations and histories, and different patterns ofsector representation and funding. Any analysisof the effectiveness of partnership working mustacknowledge this complexity, and recognise thateach of these differences will produce their ownsets of obstacles and challenges, and necessitatedifferent strategies of good practice. Broadly,

Executive summary

however, we can state that the purpose for whicha partnership was established, and theinstitutional context within which it is set, willprovide key parameters guiding the processes ofpartnership working.

We found that nearly two thirds of thepartnerships we identified were formed since1996, reflecting the relatively recent expansion ofthis mode of operation. Just under a half were oflimited life, usually less than five years. Regionalscale partnerships had the longest duration, whilethose at a local level were funded for the mostlimited periods. Public agencies and localauthorities are most frequently responsible forfunding and initiating partnerships, with privateand voluntary sector funding being more sporadic.

Partnership organisation and structure

Within these broad parameters, the organisationand structure of a partnership will shape itsoperation. The constitution, the aims andobjectives, the partners enrolled, the fundingarrangements, the committee structure and themeans of community engagement all contribute tothe effectiveness of the partnership process. Inmost cases, the formation of a partnership isobjective-led, with the identification of a needresulting in the formation of an organisation toaddress that need. Usually, however, the initialorganisation was either community-based or asingle initiative within a wider organisation. Theadoption of a partnership form often followed as asecond stage in the process, as the rulesgoverning potential sources of funding wereinvestigated. Few partnerships therefore emerged‘organically’. Most were a response to therequirements of funders.

vii

The underlying rationale of partnership working isthat it is necessary to pool the varied resources ofa range of organisations in order to create acapacity to act with regard to specific objectives.We found, however, that the enrolment of partnersoften occurs in a very limited period of time, isdriven by a small group of key individuals, and isdesigned to meet funding timetables. Thisestablishment phase is important, as mostpartnerships were very stable in terms ofmembership once operational. As with funding,private and voluntary sector engagement wasmore difficult to negotiate than that from thepublic sector, and there were additional problemsover ‘representativeness’. Identifying who shouldrepresent diverse groups, such as ‘thecommunity’, or ‘the private sector’, causedconsiderable difficulties and raised issues ofaccountability.

Working in partnership

Those involved in partnership working bring withthem a range of experiences and expectations.For some it is part of their job, and for others it isa ‘service’ they perform voluntarily. For all ofthose participating, the experience of partnershipworking is far from straightforward and involvesconsiderable negotiation. The engagement ofpartners in partnership working is uneven, andorganisational problems arise if this unevenness isnot addressed. A range of ‘internal’ factorshampers the effectiveness of partnership working.These include equivocal commitment, uncertainaims and objectives, overlapping agendas withother agencies, funding and resource problemsand differential expectations. Even if these issuesare negotiated there are ‘external’ constraints tobe tackled such as bureaucratic procedures,inflexible funding criteria, and output-drivenprocedures.

In the search for models of best practice, far toolittle attention has been paid to the ‘learningcurve’ along which all partnerships have to travel,and the trust and commitment which has to beearned, as well as given. Time is needed beforethe delivery phase to prepare, train and properlyrecruit partners. Successful partnerships alsodepend on the active and willing participation ofa range of partners – effective partnershipworking should not be taken for granted, but hasto be nurtured and developed collectively.

Implications for future strategy

Behind the almost uniform acceptance ofpartnerships as a ‘good thing’, there lies a wholehost of issues which need to be addressed inorder to promote effective rural regenerationstrategies. These issues include resourcing andfunding; the scales at which partnerships operateand the communities they address; processes ofaccountability and empowerment; and the verymeaning of the term regeneration itself.

Executive summary

1

Partnership working in ruralregeneration

Partnerships have emerged over the course of thepast 15 years as an increasingly commonplacefixture on the landscape of urban and ruralregeneration in Britain. Originally conceived aspart of inner city policy during the 1970s,partnership working was developed in the 1980sby the British government as a means ofloosening local government’s hold over urbaneconomic development, and by the EuropeanCommunity as a mechanism for re-directing itsstructural funds from large-scale state-led projectsto small-scale ‘bottom-up’ initiatives. The‘partnership principle’ has now becomeestablished as the preferential mode ofmanagement across a diverse raft of policy arenasfrom health to training, from conservation tocommunity development.

Equally, partnerships are no longer associatedprimarily with urban governance, but are nowalso an important tool in the governance of ruralareas. Close examination of the organisationsoperating in any small town or rural district inEngland or Wales is likely to reveal LEADERgroups, Local Agenda 21 groups, trainingpartnerships, community enterprise ordevelopment projects, civic fora, and ruraldevelopment programmes, as well as a plethoraof groups focused on marketing, productvalorisation, sustainable development, transport ortourism – all constituted as some form ofpartnership, bringing together a range oforganisations, often from across the public, privateand voluntary sectors.

The impetus for this proliferation of partnershipshas come from all levels of government, and has

been promoted by policy documents at theEuropean, national and regional scales. The CorkDeclaration from the European Conference onRural Development in 1996 stated that rural policy“must be as decentralised as possible and basedon partnership and co-operation between alllevels concerned” (p 3); while the consultationpaper, Rural England, issued by the Departmentfor the Environment, Transport and the Regionsargued that “stronger and more inclusive ruralcommunities that can respond to change in thecountryside will be assisted by better governmentthat encourages partnership between agencies”(DETR, 1999, para 2.6).

The growth of partnership working has beensupported and encouraged not only by politiciansand government officials but frequently also bypractitioners in economic and communitydevelopment. Publications for and by non-statutory community groups have emphasised thesupposed benefits of partnerships for ‘communitycapacity-building’, helping to involve people fromthe local community in developing services“appropriate to their needs” (Wilson and Charlton,1997) and developing “initiatives which comefrom the community, which are more likely tosucceed in the long term than ‘top-down’approaches” (Greenlees, 1998).

However, little continues to be known about howrural regeneration partnerships work in practice:about their organisation, form and workingculture; about their resourcing and staffing; abouttheir initiation and evolution; about issues ofaccountability and representation; or about theirsuccess in achieving their objectives and about theobstacles to effective partnership working.

In addressing these issues, this study focuses onthe process of working in partnerships. While

Introduction

1

2

Partnership working in rural regeneration

information is presented from an extensive surveyof the organisational characteristics of partnershipsin the study area (in order to provide anindication of the factors shaping partnershipworking), it is not the intention to definitivelyenumerate partnerships working in rural areas,nor to measure the success of partnerships incontributing to job or wealth creation or otherforms of economic development. The latter wouldin any case be highly difficult to achieve, giventhe tangled matrices of governance within whichpartnerships operate, the uncontrollable influenceof external factors, and the lack of comparativedata relating to a hypothetical non-partnershipalternative.

In focusing on the process of partnership workingin this way, we are employing a very particularunderstanding of effectiveness. As effectivenesscannot be measured in terms of partnershipoutput – jobs created or training places filled(except against the partnership’s own targets) –we need instead to think of effectiveness in termsof realising the aims of the partnership working,and reaping the supposed benefits of partnershipworking. Thus, effective partnership workingmight be where cross-sectoral representation isachieved; where communities are fully engaged inidentifying problems and solutions; where there isa pooling of resources; where replication ofactivities is avoided; where consensual decision-making processes are instituted; and so on.Obstacles to effective partnership working aretherefore obstructions which militate against therealisation of the above goals; and good practicein effective partnership working may beidentifying and implementing strategies toovercome such obstacles.

This report presents the findings of a two-yearresearch project based around a case study ofrural regeneration partnerships operating in MidWales and Shropshire, the details of which arediscussed below. The report is structured intothree sections. The first section describes thenature and characteristics of rural regenerationpartnerships in the region, identifying the factorsinvolved in influencing the form of partnerships.The second section examines issues involved inthe formation and practice of partnership,identifying challenges faced by partnerships andexamples of good practice. The third sectionanalyses experiences of working in partnerships,drawing on interviews with both partnershipcoordinators and partner representatives to

identify the elements that contribute to effectivepractice. In each case the issues highlighted relateboth to the practice of participants in partnershipworking, and to wider policies framingpartnership working. As such, the concludingchapter draws out the key findings of the reportfor both practitioners and policy makers.

Defining partnerships

For the purposes of this report, partnerships aredefined as:

An arrangement which deliberately drawstogether the resources of specifiedpartners in order to create a capacity toact with regard to a defined objective orset of objectives.

This definition includes three important elements.First, partnerships are deliberate in that they areestablished for a specific purpose. Second, thedistinctive feature of partnerships is that theydraw together the resources of a number ofdifferent partners. These ‘resources’ may befinancial, practical, material or symbolic, while thepartners may be drawn from different sectors orfrom the same sector. Third, the rationale forpartnership creation is that the blending ofresources is necessary in order for a desiredoutcome to be achieved.

In positing this definition of partnerships, a seriesof further distinctions have been made. First, wehave distinguished between the principle ofpartnership working and partnerships asorganisations. The former is a governmentalstrategy which seeks to encourage integration,consultation and the sharing of responsibility inthe process of governance, while the latter refersto a particular organisational form. Commitmentsto the partnership principle by public bodies neednot necessarily result in the formation ofpartnerships as organisations.

Second, partnerships as organisations can befurther divided into partnership programmes,partnership organisations, and partnershipprojects. A partnership programme is an initiativeinstigated and managed by a central body toprovide funding for projects or organisations,where the formation of partnerships is a conditionof funding. A partnership organisation is a formalor semi-formal body consisting of two or more

3

partners but with an identifiable financial andadministrative structure and an identity distinctfrom that of its constituent partners, which hasbeen created to combine the resources of itsconstituent partners to achieve a capacity to actwith regard to specified objectives. A partnershipproject is a working arrangement between two ormore partners established to manage orimplement a specified project, where the projectdoes not have a distinctive financial and/oradministrative structure from that of its parentalpartner organisations. This report focuses onpartnership organisations, but recognises thatsuch groups frequently exist within a partnershipfamily in which partnership organisations may befunded under partnership programmes, maythemselves be partners in other partnershiporganisations, may manage their own partnershipprogrammes, and may be involved in specificpartnership projects with other agencies.

Third, distinctions may be drawn betweendifferent types of partnership organisation, usinga variety of factors including constitution, focus,territorial scale, funding, organisational structureand sectoral representation. In particular, wedistinguish in this report between facilitativepartnerships, which are discussion and policyfocused, and which seek to enable through over-arching strategic engagement; and deliverypartnerships, which are targeted to specificpractical outcomes. The focus on thiscategorisation is not to suggest that it has pre-eminence over other possible categorisations, butrather emphasises that this differential structuringof the aims of a partnership may produce differentobstacles to effective partnership working andtherefore may require different strategies for goodpractice.

The research project

This report is based on three principal sources ofinformation, collected through empirical researchin the three counties of Ceredigion, Powys andShropshire. First, an extensive desktop and libraryexercise was undertaken to produce a database ofrural regeneration partnerships operating in thestudy region, which allowed the analysis of thekey characteristics of partnerships and of factorsimportant in structuring their form. Over 150partnerships were identified during this stage ofthe project. Second, a postal questionnaire surveywas sent to 50 of these partnerships, selected as a

representative sample on the basis of thecharacteristics identified in stage one. Data fromthe 33 questionnaires returned has beenemployed to analyse the activities, resourcing,constitution and organisation of partnerships, andto identify factors structuring the environment ofworking in partnerships, as well as perceivedadvantages and disadvantages of partnershipworking. Third, interviews were conducted duringthe spring and summer of 1999 with coordinatorsand committee members of six partnerships,selected for intensive case study as illustrative ofthe range of partnerships identified in the region(see Box 1 and Appendix A). These interviewsfocused on attitudes towards partnership workingand the experience of working in the partnershipsconcerned, and on discussion of problemsencountered and strategies adopted to overcomeobstacles. In total, over 60 interviews were heldduring this stage of the project.

In addition to the above, eight further interviewswere conducted with representatives of a numberof public, voluntary sector and local governmentbodies engaged in promoting and resourcingpartnership working. Further information was alsogathered through attendance of project teammembers at meetings of the case studypartnerships, and at other relevant conferencesand meetings held during the period of theproject.

Introduction

4


Box 1: The six case study partnerships

The Mid Wales Partnership

A facilitative partnership of public, private and voluntary sector bodies in the Mid Wales regions of Powys, Ceredigionand Meirionnydd.

Empowering Enterprise in Local Communities

A facilitative partnership under the Single Regeneration Budget, funding community regeneration projects inShropshire and Herefordshire.

Jigso

A facilitative partnership organisation operating across rural Wales, involved in encouraging community participationthrough the provision of training and awarding of grants.

Menter Powys LEADER II Local Action Group

A delivery partnership organisation operating as the local action group of the European Union’s LEADER II programmein Powys.

Oswestry Hills LEADER II Local Development Group

A delivery partnership organisation operating as the local action group of the European Union’s LEADER II programmein the area surrounding Oswestry in north west Shropshire.

The Market Town Initiative

A partnership programme run by the Development Board for Rural Wales1, to fund 10 community-based regenerationinitiatives in small towns in Mid Wales. Research on this case study focused in particular on three partnershiporganisations funded under the initiative:

Curiad Caron

A community-based partnership organisation operating under the Market Town Initiative in Tregaron anddistrict, Ceredigion.

Deudraeth 2000

A community-based partnership organisation operating under the Market Town Initiative inPenrhyndeudraeth, Gwynedd.

United Hay

A community organisation, funded by the Market Town Initiative, and operating in Hay-on-Wye, Powys.

Notes: These partnerships are described in more detail in Appendix A; 1 integrated into the Welsh DevelopmentAgency in April 1999.

5

Identifying the practice of partnershipworking

The evolution of partnership working in ruralregeneration may be traced back to exploratoryattempts to coordinate public sector involvementin urban development by the Callaghangovernment in the late 1970s (see the 1977 InnerCity White Paper and the 1978 Inner Urban AreasAct). The longest-established of the partnershipsidentified in Mid Wales and Shropshire dates fromthis era, having been initially formed and fundedunder the then Urban Aid programme. However,partnerships were only incorporated into themainstream of urban and rural development underthe Conservative government of the 1980s andearly 1990s, primarily as a strategy to disperseresponsibility for regeneration from localgovernment to include the private sector, and as ameans of shifting the emphasis in urban policyfrom state intervention to stimulating anenterprise culture. Through partnership working,it was believed, business values could beintroduced into the public sector, and a morecompetition-oriented form of regeneration policycould be nurtured through the bidding process.

The City Challenge initiative, launched in 1991,and its successor, the Single Regeneration Budget(SRB), have in particular been identified as keymechanisms for entrenching the partnershipprinciple in urban regeneration. However, thenumber of rural regeneration projects fundedunder these programmes has remainedcomparatively small, and this has encouraged anerroneous identification of partnerships solelywith urban governance, and a consequential lackof research on partnerships in rural regeneration.

In reality, partnership working has become ahighly significant feature of rural governance inBritain. The partnership principle has beenimplicit in the strategy of agencies such as theDevelopment Board for Rural Wales (DBRW)since the 1970s, and the term ‘partnership’ itselfhas been commonly employed since the late1980s (see annual reports of the DBRW, 1978-97).In a Welsh context, the explicit promotion ofpartnership organisations emerges in the urbanregeneration work of the Welsh DevelopmentAgency (WDA) in the early 1990s and is extendedto initiatives in rural areas under its remit, such asCarmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire (WDA,Annual reports and accounts, 1990-99). Morebroadly, the three ‘rural’ White Papers publishedby the British government in 1995/96 (DoE/MAFF,1995; Scottish Office, 1995; Welsh Office, 1996) allpositioned the principles of partnership,community engagement and shared responsibilityat the core of government rural policy, and theseprinciples were subsequently incorporated intothe working practices of government agencies.

The reorganisation of local government during the1990s also prompted the expansion ofpartnerships between or involving local councils;especially in areas where a complete transition tounitary authorities had taken place (as occurred inWales with the transition from a two-tier to aunitary system in 1996), or where a district gained‘independence’ from a shire county as a newunitary authority (for example, Wrekin inShropshire, which, following a review of the LocalGovernment Commission’s recommendation, wasgranted unitary status in 1997 leaving a two-tierstructure in the remainder of the county).Strategy documents produced by the newauthorities in Mid Wales and Shropshire stronglyemphasised the key role of partnership in theirfuture operations for financial reasons and to

Characteristics of ruralregeneration partnerships

2

6


achieve economies of scale (Ceredigion CountyCouncil, 1996, 1997; Powys County Council, 1996,1997; Shropshire County Council, 1997).

Additionally, the review of the EuropeanCommunity’s Structural Funds in 1988 identified‘partnership’ as one of four ‘general principles’ ofits regional policy as a strategy for re-directingfunds from state-driven infrastructural projects tolocally driven endogenous development. Thisnew emphasis gained significance for ruralregeneration through the parallel identification of‘redeveloping rural areas’ as a priority objective ofthe Structural Funds (Objective 5b) and thesubsequent qualification by a number of ruralregions in Britain for assistance under this criteria,positioning the European Union as a major sourceof funding for rural regeneration projects, and ofpartnership as a necessary pre-requisite foraccessing such funding.

At the same time, the term ‘partnership’ hasbecome widely employed as a rhetorical device,being loosely applied to a broad spectrum ofconsultative or funding arrangements of varyingdegrees of formality. For example, the NationalAssembly for Wales has launched a ‘LocalGovernment Partnership Council’ which is ineffect a forum for consultation between theAssembly and local councils. Similarly, localgovernment departments may speak of ‘workingin partnership’ to refer to routine consultativearrangements, while business may describesponsorship of local organisations as ‘partnershipwith the community’. Identifying partnerships asdefined for this report therefore requires carefulnegotiation of a lexiographical maze, and closeanalysis of the characteristics of organisationsdescribing themselves as partnerships.

Initiation, duration and focus ofpartnerships

Partnerships can exhibit a wide range ofcharacteristics in terms of their age and duration,focus and activity, funding, scale of operation andsectoral representation. These variations reflectthe structural contexts in which partnerships areformed and operate, but may also producedifferent obstacles to effective partnership workingand require different strategies for good practice.

The influence of external factors is evident in thedates of initiation of partnerships in Mid Wales

and Shropshire. Nearly two-thirds of thepartnerships identified in the region were formedduring or after 1996, reflecting the relativelyrecent expansion of partnership working in ruralregeneration, driven by changes in public policy(Figure 1). In particular, the implementation ofthe second round of Objective 5b funding in 1994,and local government reorganisation in Wales in1996 provided an impetus for partnershipformation in those years – the former requiringpartnerships to be created in order to accessfunding, and the latter resulting in partnershipsbetween the new unitary authorities for bothstrategic and service delivery purposes.

Just under half of the partnerships in the databasehave been constituted to operate for a limitedduration – usually because funding has only beensecured for a limited period, or because thepartnership forms part of a limited-lifeprogramme. In most cases, the set duration is fora period of five years or less. This hasconsequences in terms of strategic planning bypartnerships – as is discussed in the next chapter– but also raises issues for the chronologicalplotting of partnership formation based onanalysis of currently existing partnerships.However, it is clear that the period from 1995 to1999 witnessed a rapid cumulative increase in thenumber of partnerships operating in Mid Walesand Shropshire.

The proliferation of partnerships is evident at allscales of operation (Table 1). However, there isarguably a greater continuity and longevity ofpartnerships between organisations at a regionalscale. Nine of the 12 partnerships in our databaseestablished before 1993 operate at a regional scaleor above; and just over half of regional-scalepartnerships and nearly two thirds of county-scalepartnerships in the database have not beenconstituted for a limited life-span. In contrast,over 70% of sub-county partnerships have alimited life and – perhaps significantly – all havebeen established since 1993.

The fixed duration of many community-focusedpartnerships reflects their predominant focus onthe delivery of services and specific projects, ratherthan as fora for consultation or strategic planning.Nearly nine out of 10 sub-county partnershipshave a ‘delivery’ focus, compared with just over athird of regional scale partnerships. Thispolarisation has a number of consequences.‘Delivery’ partnerships tend to be constructed

7

Figure 1: The growth of partnership working in Mid Wales and Shropshire

Characteristics of rural regeneration partnerships

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Num

ber

of p

artn

ersh

ips

Year

Date of initiation of partnerships 1992-99

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Num

ber

of p

artn

ersh

ips

Number of partnerships operating per year 1992-99

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

Year

1992

8


Tabl

e 1:

The

str

uctu

re o

f pa

rtne

rshi

ps in

Mid

Wal

es a

nd S

hrop

shire

Focu

s of

Init

iati

on o

fDu

rati

on o

fpa

rtne

rshi

pFu

ndin

g of

par

tner

ship

part

ners

hip

part

ners

hip

Sect

or m

ix o

f pa

rtne

rs

Num

ber

Aver

age

Scal

e of

ofPr

ior

to19

9419

97-

On-

Lim

ited

no o

fte

rrit

ory

init

iati

ves

FD

EUQ

LAP

TEC

1993

-96

2000

goin

glif

eQ

LAV

Ppa

rtne

rs

Regi

onal

and

abo

ve73

4726

2843

2714

109

3529

3835

6451

3036

10.3

8

Coun

ty50

1337

2014

265

263

2520

3218

4340

1932

7.48

Sub-

coun

ty25

3022

19

Area

141

137

109

00

08

62

127.

29

Plac

e17

314

410

81

10

108

710

4.35

Tota

ln

154

6490

5977

7020

3712

7863

7975

132

121

7187

7.38

%10

042

5838

5045

1324

851

4151

4986

7646

56

Key:

F =

fac

ilita

tive

; D =

del

iver

y; E

U =

Eur

opea

n U

nion

; Q =

qua

ngo;

LA

= co

unty

or

dist

rict

coun

cil;

P =

priv

ate

sect

or; T

EC =

Tra

inin

g an

d En

terp

rise

Coun

cil;

V =

volu

ntar

y/co

mm

unit

y.

Sour

ce: J

RF C

omm

unit

y Ac

tion

, Par

tner

ship

s an

d Em

erge

nt F

orm

s of

Gov

erna

nce

Dat

abas

e, 1

999

9

around specific projects and are often fundedunder particular programmes or initiatives. Assuch they tend to have a pre-determined limitedlife, and those currently operational will invariablyhave been established within the past five years.In contrast, ‘facilitiative’ partnerships, focused onstrategic discussion and planning, frequently havea broader, rolling agenda and therefore are morelikely not to have a pre-determined life span.

Thus, not only are the detailed processes ofworking in partnership likely to be differentbecause of the different purposes of thepartnership working, but issues of timing, start-up,building rapport and trust, and securing continuedbenefits after the end of the partnership can beexpected to be of greater concern to deliverypartnerships than to facilitative partnerships.Furthermore, there is a clear question of power inthe scaling of this typology, as the predominanceof delivery partnerships at a sub-county scalesuggests that the expansion of community-scalepartnerships has been driven more by an interestof sharing the burden of project implementation,than by a desire to create new mechanisms forpublic participation and strategic engagement.

Funding partnerships and sectoralrepresentation

One of the advantages of partnership workingemphasised within policy discourse is the capacityof partnerships to integrate the public, private andvoluntary sectors. Following this rhetoric, somecommentators have insisted on tri-sectoralrepresentation as a fundamental defining featureof partnerships (Westholm, 1999). Transferringthis discourse into practice, the partnershipscurrently being established to monitor andimplement Objective 1 funding in West Wales andthe Valleys are being formed within guidelinesstipulating a strict three-way division ofrepresentation between the public, private andvoluntary sectors.

However, in practice, few of the ruralregeneration partnerships currently operating inMid Wales and Shropshire meet this ideal. Lessthan a third of partnerships have representationfrom all three sectors, and for a significantproportion the partnerships exist solely betweenagencies in the public sector. Overall, thevoluntary sector is represented in only 46% ofpartnerships in the database, and the private

sector in 56% (Table 1). Significantly, both thevoluntary and private sectors are more stronglyrepresented in partnerships scaled at a sub-countylevel. This again raises questions of power, asvoluntary and private sector actors are morecommonly enrolled into partnerships focused ondelivery, than into partnerships focused onstrategic discussion and decision making.

In addition, the contribution of partners drawnfrom different sectors to partnerships is not equal.As is discussed in the next chapter, publicagencies and local authorities are frequentlyresponsible for initiating partnerships and play themajor role in resourcing partnerships, especially inthe provision of office space and personnel. Thepublic sector also plays the leading role infinancing partnerships. All of the partnerships inour database receive funding from the publicsector in some form or other, but only one ineight received any funding from private sectorsources. Very little private sector funding wasdirected to delivery partnerships, with the majorityof partnerships receiving private sectorcontributions being constituted at a regional scaleas facilitative partnerships.

The concentration of funding sources in partreflects the manner in which the growth ofpartnership working has been driven by publicagencies through the mechanism of their fundingregimes. As access to public funds hasincreasingly been funnelled through competitiveprogrammes, in which partnership is a criteria ofeligibility, so partnerships have been created togain specific public funds, as opposed to beingcreated to draw resources from a wider range ofsources across the public, private and voluntarysectors. Consequently, quangos, includingnotably the Welsh Development Agency (theWDA took over the responsibilities of the DBRWin April 1999), are the most significant source offunding for partnerships in Mid Wales andShropshire, followed closely by local authorities –who frequently provide ‘matched funding’ forpartnerships part-financed under otherprogrammes and initiatives.

The parallel importance of the European Union inpromoting partnerships is evident in the fundingof seven partnerships in the database under EUCommunity Initiatives – including LEADER,KONVER, TIERRAS and INTERREG. A further 52partnerships also received funding from other EUStructural Funds, mostly under Objective 5b.

Characteristics of rural regeneration partnerships

10


Summary

The growth of partnership working in ruralregeneration has not produced a new,homogenised, form of rural governance institution– ‘the partnership’ – but rather a diverse andcomplicated menagerie of ‘partnershiporganisations’, with different foci, different scalesof operation, different durations and histories, anddifferent patterns of sector representation andfunding. In this way, partnerships contribute towhat has been described as the “tangledhierarchies which increasingly govern rural areasin a complex web of interdependence” (Goodwin,1998).

Any analysis of effective partnership workingmust acknowledge this complexity, recognisingthat the different structures, contexts andexperiences of different partnerships will producetheir own sets of obstacles and challenges, andnecessitate different strategies of good practice tomaximise effectiveness. Furthermore, anunderstanding of the issues involved in effectivepartnership working requires an appreciation ofthe factors shaping partnership characteristics.

First, the focus of partnership process – that is, thepurpose for which a partnership arrangement wasadopted, produces particular characteristics interms of sectoral representation, funding, scaleand duration. Partnerships established tocombine the capacities of several partners in orderto undertake a specific project (deliverypartnerships) will be engaged in a different formof partnership process and will face a different setof issues, than partnerships established as fora fordiscussion between partners in order to facilitatecollective action (facilitative partnerships).

Second, the form and characteristics ofpartnerships can be strongly influenced by theinstitutional context within which they exist. Theeffective concentration of sources of funding forpartnerships in the public sector means that arelatively small number of agencies are highlyinfluential in shaping partnership characteristics.Also, there is a geography to this influence, asevidenced by the English-Welsh border whichbisects our study area, with different fundingstreams operating on either side. In Mid Wales,the long established Development Board for RuralWales and the Welsh Development Agency havebeen highly significant in funding and promotingpartnerships through programmes and initiatives

not available in Shropshire. This specificity canhinder cross-border partnerships.

Similarly, the importance of EU funding topartnerships in Mid Wales and Shropshireindicates the stimulus for partnerships created byeligibility for territorially-focused EU StructuralFunds. While the vast majority of our studyregion was eligible for Objective 5b funds duringthe project period, there was some evidence thatorganisations in areas which had received targetedEU funding since 1989 were better equipped tocompete for funds and to adapt to effectivepartnership working than those only awardedfunding in 1994. (Powys and Ceredigion qualifiedfor Objective 5b funding in the 1989-94 round ofthe Structural Funds as well as the 1994-99 round.South and West Shropshire qualified only in 1994.Furthermore, while LEADER groups wereestablished in Powys and the Teifi Valley insouthern Ceredigion in 1989, no LEADER groupexisted in Shropshire prior to 1994, and the AnturTeifi LEADER group only extended its territory tonorth Ceredigion in 1996.)

The attitude of local authorities and other localstate agencies towards partnership working is alsosignificant in this respect, potentially opening orclosing sources of funding and thus influencingthe form, scope and scale of partnerships. Forexample, local government in Shropshire hasbeen more proactive in supporting partnershipsthan its Welsh counterparts, funding acomparatively greater proportion of partnerships,and helping to initiate partnerships at a county-scale earlier than in Powys or Ceredigion.Conversely, the Mid Wales Training and EnterpriseCouncil has been a more significant funder ofcounty-scale partnerships in Powys andCeredigion than its Shropshire equivalent.

11

Partnership organisation andeffectiveness

The way in which a partnership is structured andoperates may be crucial to its effectiveness.There is no automatic means by which the simpleact of forming a partnership produces benefits ofcoordination, shared resources, greater legitimacyor enhanced capacity to act. The enrolment ofthe right partners, the identification of appropriateaims and objectives, the establishment of smoothand transparent working practices, adequateresourcing, and the building of trust betweenpartners are all important stages in constructingan effective partnership. However, if these factorsare not satisfactorily addressed, the organisationalstructure of partnership can itself become anobstacle which militates against realising thebenefits of partnership working:

“The actors [within a partnership] areessential. But you also need anappropriate framework that lets them ‘act’,rather than one that bogs them down inthe framework. You can bring actors to astandstill by pouring sand over them.”(Partnership coordinator)

Maximising the efficacy of partnershiporganisational structures raises issues for bothpolicy makers and practitioners. Policy makersindirectly create the framework within whichpartnerships operate by setting criteria forfunding, by determining the timetables for biddingand for the duration of programmes, and byregulating the types of resources available. Eachof these decisions has the potential to constrainthe organisational structures that partnerships mayadopt. Within these limits, it is the practitioners –the employees of the partnership, and the

managers and decision makers within partnerorganisations – who play the fundamental role indetermining the constitution and workingpractices of partnerships, and hence the scope foreffective partnership working. These issues canbe explored in detail with reference topartnerships in Mid Wales and Shropshire.

This chapter draws largely on a questionnairesurvey of 33 partnerships undertaken during 1998-99; see Appendix B for further details.

Issues in partnership formation

Partnerships are formed for a variety of reasons,including intentions of pooling resources,engaging communities and strengthening a‘regional voice’. However, in most cases, theformation of a partnership is objective-led, withthe identification of a ‘need’ such as training, jobcreation, or the provision of community facilities,resulting in the formation of an organisation toaddress that need. Over three quarters ofpartnerships surveyed in Mid Wales andShropshire, had been initiated in response to aperceived need, often originally as a communityorganisation or as an initiative within a widerbody, rather than as a partnership. The adoptionof a partnership form often followed as a secondstage, as potential sources of funding wereinvestigated. Nearly two fifths of partnershipssurveyed identified ‘accessing funds’ as asignificant factor in their formation.

The influence of funding requirements in drivingpartnership formation has led to some concernthat they are generating what the director of onemajor funding body labelled ‘accidentalpartnerships’:

Organisation and structure ofrural regeneration partnerships

3

12


“I wonder to what extent we are causing afairly fluid coalescence of groups, wherethey come together in order to make anapplication for funding to try and sort aparticular issue out.” (Funding agencydirector)

There continues to be a strong suspicion in somequarters, particularly in local government, aboutthe value of partnership working. For otherorganisations participation in partnerships isrationalised in an entirely negative, defensivefashion, perceiving that they could not afford tobe ‘left out’ or that they needed to be involved toprotect their own interests:

“I went ... not to encourage it. [...] I was abit concerned that they didn’t start‘interfering’ into mainstream agriculturalpolicy. So I went along because I was abit concerned about this.” (Partnerrepresentative)

If organisations feel that they have been cajoledinto partnerships, or approach partnershipworking with a defensive attitude, then the dangerarises that their strategy in partnership meetingswill be to limit the scope and evolution of thepartnership, constructing obstacles that militateagainst the development of effective partnershipworking.

A sense of being cajoled into partnerships canarise if a funding body is perceived to be playinga leading role in directing partnership formation.In general terms a range of actors are involved inthe initiation of partnerships, including communitygroups and individuals. However, in Mid Walesand Shropshire, local authorities and quangos(including the DBRW and the Rural DevelopmentCommission [RDC]) had been involved in settingup nearly two thirds of partnerships surveyed,with the local community, voluntary organisationsand key individuals each only involved in theformation of just under a third of partnerships.Funding initiatives operated by governmentdepartments or the EU were similarly involved inover a quarter of partnership formations.

This influence is exercised in a number of ways.Public bodies such as the WDA, DBRW and localauthorities are frequently involved in directlyinitiating facilitative and regional-scalepartnerships, which often build on their ownindividual capacity. In more locally-focused

partnerships, however, the involvement of publicbodies may be secondary to that of individualsand community groups. The influence of countycouncils and development boards comes inhelping local initiatives to shape theirorganisations into formats appropriate for securingfunding. For example, in the DBRW’s MarketTown Initiative, officials at the agency workedclosely with those applicants unsuccessful in thefirst round of grants to assist them in buildingpartnerships which qualified for funding in thesecond round. Apart from refining aims andobjectives, this sometimes meant extendingparticipation in the bidding organisation.

The mix of actors involved in partnershipformation becomes significant when theirinfluence extends as far as determining theconstitution of the partnership and setting its aimsand objectives. In the majority of partnershipssurveyed, the constitution and organisationalstructure of the partnership was decided not justby the partnership itself, but also by other actors.For around 15% of the partnerships, this includedthe community which the partnership wastargeted at. However, funding bodies, notablylocal authorities and government departments,were involved in determining the constitution ofjust under half of the partnerships surveyed. Thepartnerships themselves were usually the mostimportant contributor to this process, but for asignificant minority, it was the local authority orother funding body which was most influential.Just under a fifth of partnerships had no influenceover their constitution or organisational structureat all.

The setting of aims and objectives for apartnership can be even more complex. Thesenot only reflect the initial motivation for thepartnership, but frequently must also position thepartnership within the scope of fundingprogramme, while often also setting out a visionfor a community, which may or may not havebeen consulted. As Table 2 shows, the publishedaims and objectives of partnerships commonlycombine ‘output’ aims, ‘strategic’ aims and‘process’ aims. Similarly, the targets identified bypartnerships surveyed in Mid Wales andShropshire include both outputs such as buildinga community centre, the promotion of sustainabletourism or the provision of training; and ‘process’aims such as ‘sharing techniques’, encouraginggreater community involvement, and ‘workingwith other agencies’.

13

While the tendency may be to emphasise the‘output’ and ‘strategic’ aims – as these outline theunderlying purpose of the organisation and arethe reason for which it has secured funding – it isthe ‘process’ aims which set out why a partnershipform has been adopted, and which identify thebenefits which it is hoped will be achieved byworking in partnership. It is therefore the‘process’ aims which set the targets against which‘effective partnership working’ should beevaluated. The process of setting aims, objectivesand targets is an important one. The identificationof inappropriate or unrealistic ‘output’ and‘strategic’ aims may lead to the partnership beingperceived as a failure if these cannot be delivered.Similarly, if the ‘process’ aims are not clearlystated, then partners may be ambiguous abouttheir role and the development of efficientworking practices in the partnership may provedifficult.

Over 80% of partnerships surveyed are formallyevaluated by their sponsoring bodies; but lessthan a third evaluated themselves and only twoinvolved the target community in evaluation. Assuch, evaluation often tends to focus on output,taken as the most important criteria of evaluationfor nearly two thirds of the partnerships surveyed.Yet, ‘process’ aims were evaluated for over threequarters of partnerships. ‘Effectiveness ofpartnership working’ was explicitly evaluated innearly three fifths of partnerships, and for onefifth it was the main criteria of evaluation.Success in encouraging ‘new agents’ was the maincriteria for a further four partnerships.

For many partnerships, the process of partnershipformation occurs within a very limited timescale.The bidding timetables for funding programmesand initiatives frequently allow only a few weeksfor the preparation of applications between theinitial publicity and the closing deadline. This canmean that the lead role in establishing thepartnership and formulating the application isoften taken by organisations such as localauthorities with the personnel and resources todedicate to the task, and that partners are enrolledfrom a pool of existing contacts. In particular, thebidding timescale commonly does not allow forsubstantial input from local communities:

“One of the justifiable criticisms of RuralChallenge was that we had very, very littletime to make a bid for it and a group ofindividuals were brought together by the

local authority around a table as quicklyas possible to get a bid in. And then thebid turned out to be successful. And thenyou have got to deliver what are actuallyvery, very tight outputs. And of coursebecause of the tight bidding timetablethere hasn’t been the chance to doeffective community consultation.”(Partner representative)

Effective partnership working can be enhanced bymodifying the way in which funding competitionsare run by public agencies to allow a greater lead-in time for the preparation of bids and forpartnership initiation. Time needs to be allowedfor partnerships to develop strong leadership anddirection, to devise a suitable set of aims andobjectives, to enrol appropriate partners and forthe allocation and duties and responsibilities sothat each partner’s role is clearly identified andunderstood at the outset. Additionally,development agencies should consider providinglimited ‘start-up’ funding to resource potentialpartnerships during the preparation ofapplications and to facilitate effective communityengagement at this stage. Funding agencies alsohave a role to play in providing feedback tounsuccessful applicants and working with them toassist the preparation of revised bids. The goodpractice of the Development Board for RuralWales’s Market Town Initiative, which allocatedfunds in two separate rounds, may be followed inthis respect (see Box 2).

Without greater assistance for partnershipformation from public agencies, there is thedanger that competitive partnership programmeswill increasingly concentrate funds in a limitednumber of communities. Bidding successfully forpartnership funding is a skill which somecommunities are better placed to exploit thanothers. For example, communities whosesocioeconomic profile is biased towards theprofessional classes, with a relatively high numberof graduates or public sector employees in thepopulation, may be better positioned to tap intothe professional knowledge and competencies oflocal residents in the preparation of bids.Similarly, communities which have beenrecipients of previous partnership funding, orwhich have been specifically targeted bycommunity capacity building initiatives, are oftenmore able to respond to funding opportunitiesand to develop partnerships and applicationswhich meet qualification criteria:

Organisation and structure of rural regeneration partnerships

14


Table 2: Analysis of the published aims and objectives of a selection of illustrative partnerships

Dyfi Oswestry ShropshireMid Wales Eco-Valley Hills Regeneration CuriadPartnership Partnership LEADER II Partnership Caron MTI

Vision aims

Diversified economySustainable developmentEnhanced environmentIntegrated rural developmentProvide a model for othersEnhanced social resourcesBetter quality of lifeCultural distinctivenessIncreased employment opportunitiesGreater community participation

Output aims

Support local businessAttract inward investmentJob creationRepresenting local interests to

external bodiesSupport bids for fundingInfrastructural developmentIncrease tourismIncrease local sourcing of goodsEncourage ‘export’ of local productsSupport introduction of new

technologiesAssessment of local need

Process aims

Partnership to implement projectsImproving coordination between

partnersPublicising strategy and aimsPublic consultation/community

involvementCombining resources of partnersInviting local politicians to meetingsTransnational cooperation and

exchanges

Source: Curiad Caron (1997); Dyfi Eco-Valley Partnership (1997); Oswestry Hills LEADER II (1997); Mid WalesPartnership (1998); Shropshire Regeneration Partnership (1998)

15

“LEADER areas are notorious for this ...you can almost plot them on a map interms of applications that they make to awhole range of bodies because they areconfident, and they have also developed‘style’ and experience.” (Director of afunding body)

The greater ability of groups whic h haveexperience of partnership working to successfullybid for more funding is helping to produce anuneven geography in which some areas become‘partnership rich’ and others ‘partnership poor’.Unchecked, this trend may lead to the promotionof partnership working combined withcompetitive tendering for regeneration moniesserving to reinforce spatial inequalities in the

scale of rural regeneration activities, potentiallybecoming counter-productive to the regenerationobjectives of rural policy.

Greater awareness of the unequal capacities ofrural communities is required from funding bodiesin order to address this problem. Good practicemay follow that of the National Lotteries CharitiesBoard whose system is designed to guard againstgiving priority to subsequent bids from groupswho been successful previously. Grant officersscore an application against a set of criteria, butmust also comment on each application. If it isnoted that an application is scoring highlybecause of a group’s past record, the assessmentis adjusted to focus on the appropriateness of thecurrent bid.

Box 2: Good practice – the Market Town InitiativeThe Market Town Initiative was launched in 1996 by the DBRW as a competitive community-based programme toimprove the social, economic and environmental future of towns in rural Mid Wales. A total of £90,000 over threeyears in revenue funding was allocated to each of the 10 towns in two rounds of awards. In the first round, 25applications were received and five awards made to groups in Abercraf, Cardigan, Dolgellau, Rhayader and LlanfairCaereinion. Towns that were unsuccessful in the first round were given assistance and advice on their applicationsand were subsequently invited to re-submit their revised applications for a second round of awards. In thissecond round, five further awards were made to groups in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Hay-on-Wye, Llanidloes,Penrhyndeudraeth and Tregaron.

The formation of partnerships was a pre-condition of funding as the competition rules allowed for only oneapplication to be received from each town. This was intended to encourage wider participation in identificationof needs and objectives, and to act as a mark of the commitment of the community as a whole to the project. Thefailure to develop effective partnerships and the too narrow targeting of projects were common reasons for therejection of applications in the first round:

“There was one town ... [where] basically it was town council-led and the majority of the content of theirapplication was based around the importance of improving the graveyards [in the town].” (Developmentagency manager)

In the above case – as in others – officials from the development agency worked with the local group to helpthem form a wider partnership with other organisations in the community and to develop a broader programmeof activities based on more extensive consultation:

“We were able to work with them to broaden [the partnership] for a second application. And the secondapplication was just a complete turnaround and they brought in more individuals and more groups in thecommunity and more experience into the group that they had there and they submitted an applicationwhich was successful in the second round.” (Development agency manager)

By staggering the distribution of awards and by working with groups which had been unsuccessful in the firstround, the DBRW was able in its Market Town Initiative to widen the range of communities benefiting from theprogramme and to help build more effective local partnerships.


16


Enrolment of partners

The underlying rationale of partnership working isthat it is necessary to pool the varied resources ofa range of organisations in order to create a‘capacity to act’ with regard to specific objectives,such as economic regeneration and communitydevelopment. In this context, the question ofwho are enrolled as partners is crucial – not justin terms of the availability of appropriateresources, but also in terms of the legitimacy ofthe partnership with its target population.However, as discussed above, the enrolment ofpartners often occurs in a limited period of time,and is driven by a small group of key animateurs.Partners are frequently drawn from existingnetworks of contacts and establishedorganisations. Although a rational assessment ofwhich partners should be involved is commonlyundertaken, the final boundaries of inclusion andexclusion can sometimes appear arbitrary:

“On one level you were saying, ‘We are arural group, so we need the localauthorities, we need the TECs, we needthe farming unions – the agriculturalpeople’. So we wrote these organisationsin. And suddenly you start getting intothe politics of who needs to be there. Arethe National Parks members? No they arenot. So, the local authorities are there, theWDA is there, the TEC is there, the MidWales Manufacturing Group is there, theCountry Landowners Association weresupposed to be there, but I have neverseen them. The WCVA are members, as isthe Mid Wales CBI. Why the NationalParks are not there, well, I don’t know.”(Partner representative on a facilitativepartnership)

The identification and enrolment of partnersduring the establishment phase is important asmost partnerships tend to be relatively stable interms of membership once operational. This isparticularly the case with locally-focused deliverypartnerships, where the number of partners tendsto be fewer and where the appropriate partnerscan be more readily identified and enrolled at theoutset. Facilitative partnerships with a strategicrole, however, and those covering a largeterritory, tend both to have more partners andalso are more likely to have gained partners sinceformation. New partners may be recruited inorder to represent new sectors and therefore to

boost the partnership’s legitimacy, or in order toaccess new funding sources. Only rarely dopartners actually leave a partnership, usually as aconsequence of public sector reorganisation.

Engagement with partnership activity in manycontexts occurs because lead partners knowstrategically that they must incorporate otherinstitutions and those institutions in turn acceptthe obligation simply because they need to bepresent and should be involved. This iscommonplace in the recruitment of local authorityand other public sector agencies.

“The partnership was sold to the districtsand as long as they didn’t have to putmoney in then they weren’t that botheredand simply signed up.” (Coordinator,facilitative partnership)

These core agencies then operate strategicselectivity in drawing in appropriaterepresentation from other sectors for functionalreasons and to build the capacity of thepartnership to meet bidding or deliveryrequirements (see Box 3).

Making the selection of who should be involvedfrom private and voluntary sectors frequentlyinvolves mobilising strategic contacts and buildingappropriate teams through a process of informedselection. Thus representatives may be hand-picked because of the positions they hold or theirknown commitment and quality:

“What we did was to invite people to siton our group from various organisations.But rather than inviting the organisationsto send somebody, we instead almost‘cherry picked’ from the organisations thatwe wanted in order to make sure that wecould get people working together.”(Committee member, delivery partnership)

Occasionally, however, engagement arrives farmore through chance, though lead partners areclearly always looking for suitable participants.These processes, drawing on local knowledge andinterests, can raise difficult questions concerningthe representativeness of partners and thelegitimacy of their voice.

‘Representatives’ of partners are frequently ‘hand-picked’ by the lead partners to participate in thepartnerships as individuals. Although particularorganisations are involved because they are “the

17

‘standard’ organisations to be invited” a morestrategic approach may be taken to selectingparticular individuals to represent thoseorganisations to represent them. This approach isadopted in an attempt to maximise theeffectiveness of partnership working by building ateam committed to the partnership and its aims.However, it also highlights that the reasons for theinvolvement of individuals as well as for theinvolvement of organisations varies, and that notall individual participants may be involvedthrough interest in what the partnership is doing.While some do effectively volunteer because theyhave an interest or self-interest in thepartnership’s activity, in many cases the task ofrepresenting a local authority or other public bodyon a partnership is simply delegated to a memberof staff (see Box 4).

While the enrolment of public sector partners maybe relatively straightforward, enrolling partnersfrom the private sector can be more problematic.

“If you get somebody from the voluntarysector, then it may be possible to say –because there is a structure there – thatthat person can ‘represent’ the voluntarysector. And the same can be said for thepublic sector and the local authorities....But to say you can get somebody to‘represent’ the business sector is actually a

Box 3: Strategic selection of partners“SRB bids have been put in by local authorities and suddenly they realise that they haven’t got the communityand voluntary elements involved. So they say ‘Will you be our partners?’. So you are not a ‘real’ partner.”(regional partnership coordinator)

“What actually happened was that there was two of us.... And we sat down and said ‘Right, who ought tobe [in the partnership]?’. So we put some lists together about all the organisations that ought to berepresented.... And so we came up with a list and we threw this list around and we made some additionsand subtractions. Then we had a long discussion about the voluntary sector and its representation, andthe amount of public sector representation in terms of limiting it ... which was interesting. And we alsodiscussed ‘local’ representation. And we were able to ensure that there was strong local representation inthe end.” (partner representative, LEADER group)

“It is a matter of hitting the right ‘buttons’ ... depending on this, one might make a decision as to whoought to be on the partnership.” (partner representative, LEADER group)

“I think that the reason why we were there was because we were probably the only grassroots organisationthat they could find.” (community sector partner representative)

different issue, of course. Because theyrepresent their business and there aren’tnecessarily the [wider] structures there.”(Partner representative, LEADER group)

This is not just a question of representativeness,but also one of the resource-cost of partnershipworking. Conventional wisdom holds thatpartnerships enable private sector finance andexpertise to be incorporated into economicdevelopment initiatives. However, only aminority of partnerships surveyed in Mid Walesand Shropshire include private sector partners,and even fewer receive private sector finance.This reflects in part the dominance of small andmedium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the indigenousrural private sector. SMEs commonly have neitherthe surplus capital to invest in partnerships, northe surplus personnel or office space forsecondment. Membership of partnerships mayequally be regarded as a costly distraction withoutobvious returns by individual business people.

“[It is] difficult to get the private sectorinvolved in projects which have more of asocial focus. They want to see somedirect benefit back to themselves [and]with a lot of projects they cannot see anybenefits from being involved so they don’tbother.” (Partner representative)


18


“If I go to this sort of meeting then I amgetting paid for attending, as would thelocal authority and the WDA people. Butif the local hotelier goes along to such ameeting to represent the local tourismindustry, then he is not paid and is notattending to his business whilst he isthere.” (public agency representative)

Although local enterprises do often contribute inkind to community-based partnerships, at a widerterritorial scale the only enterprises with the sizeand profit margins to allow effective participationin partnerships are frequently the privatised utilitycompanies. More usually, the employer sector isrepresented by public sector institutions such as

colleges and hospitals. Business interests arerepresented by chambers of commerce andfarming unions, or through TECs.

Community engagement

The promotion of partnership working in ruralpolicy has strongly emphasised the potential ofpartnerships as a means of engaging localcommunities in regeneration. Partnerships areseen as a mechanism for devolving decisionmaking and assisting a transition from ‘top-down’to ‘bottom-up’ planning in rural development. Anumber of rural partnerships, including the EULEADER groups and the DBRW’s Market Town

Box 4: Reasons for individuals’ participation in partnerships

Delegation

“Periodically everything is thrown up in the air and it then comes down on different people. And this wasone of the things that came down on me. Having said that, one of the reasons why it came down on mewas because I had an interest in this area. But basically, it just sort of landed on my desk.” (Voluntarysector partner representative)

“[The partnership] landed on my desk really.” (Public agency representative)

“Originally the director of community services was nominated ... but he delegated it to me. He thoughtthat I was the most appropriate person to attend.” (Local authority representative)

Inheritance

“The guy who actually wrote the bid, wrote it when he was working [for another organisation]. Shortlyafter submitting the bid he got a job [here]. He was my boss. He then left and wasn’t replaced, so I got it!”(Local authority representative)

Selection

“The actual people involved ... were actually hand-picked in many cases. They were hand-picked by myselfand my boss. So it was quite a ‘top-down’ process I suppose. So we basically hand-picked the peoplerepresenting each of the organisations.” (Partnership coordinator)

Interest

“During the course of [an] application I spoke to [the coordinator] at great length and I was asked tobecome Chair.” (Partnership chair)

“I was invited to my first meeting and it just led on from there really.... And of course, when you are a localparish councillor and people say that money is available for projects, then you’re all ears aren’t you?”(Partnership committee member)

19

Initiative, have been explicitly charged withencouraging community participation. However,the effective engagement of local communitiescan be as problematic as enrolling private sectorpartners, and the extent of communityparticipation in partnerships is similarly limited.

Partnerships tend to be structured fairly formally,often at the insistence of funding bodies. Theyusually require constitutions, managementcommittees, auditing procedures and so on.However, this is a structural form which favoursthe enrolment of organisations as partners, asopposed to positioning more ambiguous entitiessuch as ‘the local community’ as partners. Ofpartnerships surveyed in Mid Wales and Shropshire,only two listed ‘the community’ as one of theirpartners. More commonly ‘community organisations’are enrolled to represent local organisations.

For partnerships focused on individualcommunities, this commonly involves enrolmentof the town council, or parish council (in England)or community council (in Wales). Forpartnerships operating over a wider territory, thedefinition of the ‘local community’ may be moredifficult, and ‘local representation’ is frequentlyprovided by county or district councils, and, inEngland, by the county rural community council(the Community Council for Shropshire was apartner in five of the seven partnerships inShropshire responding to our questionnaire; thereis no equivalent organisation in Powys orCeredigion). Very rarely are ‘grassroots’community groups enrolled as partners.

However, the enrolment of local councils andcouncillors as ‘community representatives’ onpartnerships raises questions about their actualrepresentativeness. This is especially problematicin areas – such as large parts of our study region –where there is a strong tradition of non-party localpolitics and where many councillors are electedunopposed. Furthermore, councillors may notalways be willing participants in partnerships. Anumber of community-scale partnerships in thestudy region had experienced frosty relations withthe local county councillor or the local town,parish or community council, because thecouncillors feared that their role or authority wasbeing challenged by the new partnership.

Although the formal involvement of communitygroups as partners may be limited, mostpartnerships are engaged in some form of widercommunity consultation. Only two of the

partnerships surveyed claimed not to liaise withlocal people at all. Over 80% of the partnershipsfelt that engaging local people was important totheir work, though the scope of this engagementtended to be concentrated particularly on theidentification of needs, finding solutions, and, to alesser degree, with the implementation of projects(Table 3). A minority of the partnershipsconsidered engagement of the community inproviding or exchanging information, or in givingfeedback on partnership activities, to be ‘veryimportant’.

However, for many partnerships, local liaisoninvolved consultation with communityrepresentatives – local councillors, ‘keyindividuals’ or other community groups – ratherthan with the community at large (Table 3). Justover half of the partnerships surveyed in MidWales and Shropshire liaised directly with thelocal community, most commonly through publicmeetings, although some partnerships employednewsletters, noticeboards, or ‘planning for real’and ‘community appraisal’ exercises, as well aspublicity in the local media (Table 3).

The employment of more direct forms ofcommunity engagement does not necessarilymean that the views received will be any morerepresentative of the population as a whole. Theturnout at public meetings tends to be low, oftenattracting a relatively small group of people whoare known to be active in the community:

“What you tend to find then of course isthat it is the same faces that attend.... Yousee the same people who sometimes weara different ‘hat’, but essentially there arethe same people there. So there is a‘clique’ – I suppose this is an unfair word– but there is a section of the communitywhich is well geared up, and which is oneverybody’s invitation list.” (Partner in afacilitative partnership)

“We have had articles in the newspaperand we have urged groups that havereceived support to communicate that. SoI don’t think that it is not for the want oftrying, or whatever. It is just the nature ofthese things, I think, that those peoplewho are ‘in the know’ are ‘in the know’,and it is very, very difficult to broadenthings out and widen involvement.”(Partner in a facilitative partnership)


20


The true value of forms of direct communityengagement, such as public meetings, maytherefore be not in the compilation of a‘community viewpoint’, but rather in theidentification and mobilisation of a core of activevolunteers willing to work for a partnership in acommunity.

Proactive involvement in partnership activity bycommunities and community organisations doesvary. Interviewees in one part of the study regionsuggested that parish councils exhibited a greaterability to mobilise their communities to engagewith partnership initiatives than small towncouncils; but evidence from other parts of theregion would contradict this. More generally, thesocio-economic profile of a community can be afactor. In West Wales, it was suggested thatvillages around the university towns andcommunities with high proportions of activeretirees produced relatively more grantapplications than remoter, more agriculturally-focused communities. In Shropshire, intervieweesnoted that community engagement was oftendifficult in commuting areas due to the lack of an

‘active voluntary workforce’ in the villages duringthe day. Similar observations were made aboutthe differences between areas attracting differenttypes of in-migrants:

“So much community development alsodepends on the typesets of the peopleinvolved. [In area x] you have got a lot ofpeople who have come in and who arelooking for the ‘rural idyll’. I am notbeing rude at all but you are talking aboutthe hippies and these types of groups.But they are people who have come fromelsewhere and have always been ‘busy’types of people and have moved into thisarea and want to get things done. But in[area y] you have had people moving inwho have come to the area for a quiet lifeand don’t really want to get involved incommunity development issues.”(Partnership coordinator)

Previous experience of working in and withpartnerships is also significant in raising thewillingness and capacity of communities to

Table 3: Community engagement by partnerships

Partnerships’ assessment of the importanceto their work of community engagement Very Reasonably Notthrough specific tasks (%) important important important

The provision/exchange of information 42 42 16The identification of local needs 82 15 3Finding solutions to local needs 73 18 9Involvement in projects 67 18 15Feedback on partnership action 45 39 16

Methods employed by partnerships to liaisewith local communities % of partnerships surveyed

Liaison with local councillors 42Liaison with other key individuals 67Liaison with community groups 61Public meetings 52Through the local media 12Newsletter 9No liaison with local community 6Flyers 3Noticeboard 3Postal survey 3‘Planning for real’ exercise 3

Source: Questionnaire survey

21

become engaged with new partnerships. The EULEADER programme is judged to have played animportant role in this respect in stimulating thedevelopment of community participation in ruralregeneration:

“The presence of a LEADER programmehas been a major factor in generatinginterest and in getting people activelyinvolved.” (Partner representative in afacilitative partnership)

“I think that it is more difficult to getpeople to do things when there is nolegacy of a LEADER programme.”(Partnership coordinator)

However, across all areas, two major factorsappear to restrict the extent of communityengagement. First, the partnership process isseen as being too formal and bureaucratic.Untrained community representatives can find itdifficult to contribute equally with public sectorrepresentatives in partnership meetings, whilecommunity groups seeking to form partnershipsor apply for grants can be put off by thepaperwork involved:

“Because of the probable over-weightingof the bureaucracy involved, we arealienating the grassroots. It is quitefrightening for the small local villagegroup to be faced with something like 30-odd pages of application forms. It is quitehorrendous. So they look at the formsand say, ‘Well we only want £500 to startsomething going’, and so they don’tbother making an application in manyinstances.” (Partnership chair)

Second, partnership organisations themselvesfrequently feel that they have insufficientresources to adequately engage with localcommunities:

“At the moment [the partnership] is notreally doing anything to expand andwiden involvement in communitydevelopment activities. It is very difficultfor us to do this because we just don’thave that sort of money.” (Partnershipcoordinator)

“It was also impossible to do muchmeaningful work with local communitiesas there was only [one person] working at

a local level.” (Partner representative on afacilitative partnership)

These issues could be addressed through anumber of measures. Project work explicitlyaimed at encouraging proactive participation bycommunity members in identifying communityneeds and developing strategies to meet themcould be extended, including the targeting of suchschemes in areas with limited previous experienceof participatory community development. Moreresources need to be devoted within partnershipsmore broadly to supporting engagement withlocal communities. Partnerships and fundingorganisations can help broaden communityinvolvement by reviewing their procedures andpractices to cut unnecessary bureaucracy andmaximise the use of accessible language. Finally,specific training for parish and communitycouncillors and other community activists inpartnership working would facilitate their moreeffective engagement in the partnership process.

Effective community engagement can help toenhance the perceived legitimacy of partnershipsin the areas they cover. Partnerships should aimto consult with local communities as broadly aspossible, and more could follow the good practiceof some partnerships in the Market Town Initiativewith ‘community representatives’ elected to themanagement committee at public meetings (Box5). Other techniques for informing and listeningto local people, including newsletters,noticeboards, surveys, exhibitions and ‘planningfor real’ exercises, could be adopted morebroadly.

The organisation of partnerships

The organisational structure of a partnership isusually the product of formulation by thepartnership itself and the direction of leadpartners and funding agencies. So, while there issome variety, few partnerships differ significantlyfrom the standard model of a formally constitutedorganisation in which executive authority isvested with a management committee orequivalent.

The size and make-up of the managementcommittee, and the balance of its responsibilitiesbetween strategic direction and day-to-dayadministration, is, however, more mixed. Indelivery partnerships, the management committee


22


may consist of a fairly small, tight-knit group ofpartner representatives with direct technicalknowledge and authority who are in effectresponsible for the administration of thepartnership. In facilitative partnerships, thecommittee may have a more strategic anddiscursive role and the aim of bringing togetherdifferent sectors of opinion may produce a largemembership, although this may be offset by theexistence of specialist sub-committees (see Box6).

The level of commitment expected from partnerscan also vary. Of the partnerships studied in MidWales and Shropshire, the extreme is representedby the Mid Wales Partnership, a strategicpartnership which demands not just that all

partners attend committee meetings, but that theyare represented by senior personnel or boardmembers. This high level of representation isdeemed necessary in order to maximise theperceived authority of the partnership whenrepresenting the region’s interests to governmentat a Welsh, British and European level. Incontrast, in just under a quarter of partnershipssurveyed in Mid Wales and Shropshire, one ormore partners were not represented on themanagement committee. In some cases, theexcluded partners were those whose contributionto the partnership was essentially limited tospecialist expertise or resources; in others, thosenot present were ‘partners’ whose only role in thepartnership was as a source of funding.

Box 5: Case studies – community representation

Curiad Caron

Curiad Caron was established in 1994 by local people in Tregaron, Ceredigion, concerned about the community’seconomic and social decline. The 10 original members were drawn from the local churches, Womens’ Instituteand local businesses, and operated informally with monthly meetings. The group applied for funding under theDBRW’s Market Town Initiative in 1996 and adopted a more formal organisation as a non-profit-making companylimited by guarantee, which is managed on a voluntary basis. The management committee of the partnershipincludes invited representatives of organisations and interest groups in the town, such as the WI and farmers, inan attempt to achieve a unified community approach. However, the appointment of a ‘youth’ representativeproved difficult, with the Young Farmers Club and the head pupils of the local secondary school all declininginvitations to participate. Following receipt of funding from the Market Town Initiative, the territory of CuriadCaron was expanded to cover the whole of the former Tregaron Rural District Council area, and applications wereinvited for five additional directors. More than five applications were received and elections held on a constituencybasis, with the new directors elected to represent specific communities within the partnership’s territory.

Menter Aberteifi

Menter Aberteifi was established by Cardigan Town Council in partnership with the town’s Chamber of Trade in1995. Originally the group was driven by the town council, which had six members on the partnership’s committee.However, the degree of town council involvement was reduced following the award of Market Town Initiativefunding in 1996. The re-structured executive committee now has 12 voting members. Four of these are appointedmembers representing the main partners – the town council, the chamber of trade, Ceredigion County Council,and the Teifi Estuary Environmental Millennium Initiative (TEEMI) – while the remaining eight, including the fourofficers, are elected annually at a public meeting. In addition there are 12 non-voting members who attend theexecutive committee meetings, representing other partners and interested organisations, including the WelshDevelopment Agency, the TEC, Local Agenda 21, the Antur Teifi LEADER group and the local college, as well as allof the town’s county councillors. Four public meetings were held during the first year, but limited attendance hasled to this being reduced to two meetings per year. Particular attention has been paid to targeting people whohave been critical of the work of Menter Aberteifi to achieve wider community involvement in the initiative. Asa result of concerns about increasing the involvement of young people, a youth sub-group was established in1998, with a non-voting representative on the main committee.

23

The frequency of meetings of partnerships’management committees varies, with mostmeeting on either a monthly or a quarterly basis.The formality of the meeting location also varies,with regional- and county-scale partnershipstending to meet at formal locations such ascouncil offices; many community-scalepartnerships, however, favour more informallocations such as hotels and tea rooms. A numberof partnerships rotate the location of meetings

between different parts of their territory.However, in the majority of partnershipssurveyed, there was also much more frequentinformal liaison between the key partners, oftenon a weekly and in some cases on a daily basis.Several partnership coordinators felt this informalcontact to be more important in the effectiveworking of the partnership than the formalmeetings.


Box 6: Case studies – committee structures

The Mid Wales Partnership

All 17 partners are represented on the board of the Mid Wales Partnership, although representation is not equal.The Welsh Development Agency has two delegates and two advisors at meetings, while the three county councilseach have three representatives (two elected councillors and one officer) and two advisors. All other partners,mostly from the voluntary and private sectors, have one member each. The partnership insists that all partnersare represented at meetings by senior officials who have the executive authority to take decisions on behalf oftheir organisations and to commit resources. Thus, the councils are represented by the council leader, the chair ofthe economic development committee and the chief executive. The WDA’s representatives include the chair of itsboard, who is also chair of the partnership.

Beneath the board are six working groups responsible for strategic planning and policy formulation in the areas oftransport, skills and training, rural development, information technology, tourism and European issues. Not allpartners are represented on all working groups, with membership reflecting the partners’ interests. Partners arerepresented on the working group by personnel with specialist interests or responsibilities in the areas concerned.

Menter Powys

The Menter Powys LEADER II Local Action Group is ‘hosted’ by Powys County Council, which is the lead partner,originally as part of the chief executive’s office, but later in the community, leisure and recreation department.The partnership has a management committee comprising representatives from the four ‘funding partners’ – thecounty council, the WDA, Powys TEC and the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority – and is attended by threesenior officers of the council, and one representative from each of the other partners. The management committeemeets quarterly, and is responsible for strategic decision making, such as formulating the business plan. Belowthe management committee is an officers’ group which is responsible for implementation of the partnership’swork. Meetings of the officers’ group are attended by specialist personnel from the core partners and byrepresentatives of the eight non-funding partners.

Llwybr

The Llwybr partnership, funded under the EU TIERRAS Programme to develop an ‘information society’ in ruralWales, has four main groups. It is managed by a steering group composed of seven representatives from theoriginal partner organisations plus an observer from the Welsh Office. The steering group meets quarterly toevaluate applications to the partnership’s fund, and every two months to define work programmes. An operationalgroup develops the work programmes and comprises 15 officers drawn from 14 organisations, appointed by themain partners. Alongside these committees are two task groups, responsible for carrying out the partnership’sprojects, with up to 28 members with specialist technical expertise, drawn from the partner organisations.

24


If partners’ commitment to meetings can vary, sodoes their contribution of resources. Manypartnerships make at least an implicit distinctionbetween ‘funding’ and ‘non-funding’ partners.While all but three of the partnerships surveyed inMid Wales and Shropshire received funding frommore than one source, in the majority of cases allfunding agencies were in the public sector. Thusan implicit privileging of funding partners as thepartnership’s ‘core partners’ serves to reinforce thedominance of the public sector in partnershipworking:

“The ‘core’ partners are the ones thatprovide the money.... So the localauthorities, the WDA and the TEC – wellthose are the big people.” (Partnershipboard member)

The public sector, and notably local authorities,also takes the leading role in the provision ofmaterial resources to partnerships, including officespace, administrative support and personnel.Nearly half of the partnerships surveyed wereserviced by employees of one or more of theirpartners working on their behalf. Countycouncils, TECs, Menter Powys and the ShropshireRural Community Council all seconded employeesto work for partnerships they funded.

Three quarters of partnerships surveyed employedtheir own staff, usually in a managerial or projectimplementation role, although a third had onlyone full-time member employee. Mostpartnerships therefore rely heavily on volunteerlabour. The Llanidloes LINK Market TownInitiative, for example, recorded over 170 hours ofvoluntary contributions between October 1997and March 1998 (Llanidloes LINK Interim Report,March 1998).

By comparison with the public sector, thecontribution of voluntary sector partners inparticular is often less tangible. Voluntary andcommunity sector partners are commonly enrolledto provide local representation and/or specialistskills and knowledge. This division of roles canproduce tensions, as funding partners exert moreinfluence. Voluntary sector partners enrolled toshape the direction of the partnership’s activitiesfeel not only marginalised, but even that the dualrole of the funding partners is producing a conflictof interest:

“The message that you get is that peopleare not generally happy with partnershipsor their experiences of partnerships....The issues are very much about the‘weight’ that is given to the voluntarysector within partnerships, literally, interms of voting rights and so on, and whatthey can bring to the table and how this isrecognised. This subsequently opens upanother whole set of issues for us aboutwhether you can have people in ‘equal’partnerships where they are actually in aclient relationship to one of the otherpartners as funders.” (Voluntary sectorrepresentative)

Despite these concerns, partnerships do appear tobe blending resources from different sources andsectors, and although sometimes undervalued, thecontribution of voluntary sector or communitypartners is often fundamental in providing apartnership with the legitimacy, local knowledgeand voluntary labour it requires to create a‘capacity to act’.

Summary

The organisation and structure of a partnershipprovide the architecture of its future operation.The constitution, aims and objectives, partnersenrolled, funding arrangements, committeestructure and the role of community engagement,all shape the working practices and culture of apartnership, and hence contribute to theeffectiveness of the partnership process. Thesestructural factors can construct obstacles andchallenges which militate against the effectivenessof partnership working, and colour participants’experiences of working in partnerships. Theseexperiences, and the lessons that may be learntfrom them, are examined in the next chapter.

25

Introduction

Setting aside the policy rhetoric of the benefits ofpartnership working – which emphasisescommunity capacity building, developing servicesappropriate to a community’s needs andencourages initiatives that come fromcommunities rather than developing as top-downapproaches – this discussion concentrates on theexperience of working in partnership. In ourwider survey of partnership activity discussed inChapter 3, lead partners and partnershipcoordinators and officers sharply identified bothadvantages and disadvantages associated with thismode of working (Box 7). Their views, however,capture one perspective on partnership working,and while they confirm many of broader issuesraised in the established literature on partnership,they give only a partial insight into the views ofother actors in the partnership process.

To explore these wider participants’ views, 63semi-structured interviews were undertaken withpartners in both facilitative partnerships (FP) anddelivery partnerships (DP) in order to examinetheir experiences of partnership working anddevelop an understanding of how effectivepartnership working might be defined. (To retainconfidentiality quotations are attributed topartners working in different roles.) As notedearlier, the criteria that were considered as thebenchmarks against which effective partnershipworking might be judged included adequatecross-sectoral representation, pooling of resourcesand ideas, consensual decision making, avoidanceof replication of activities and a full engagementby the community with problem definition,process and solutions. This chapter addressesthese criteria by discussing three themes. First,the experience of working in partnership in

general is explored; second, the experience ofworking specifically in facilitative or deliverypartnerships is examined; and finally, these twoelements are drawn together to consider bestpractice in effective partnership working.Throughout this chapter, the text highlights thekey issues that have arisen in these discussionsand the opinions of respondents are set out inboxes to allow those working in partnership tospeak in their own terms about their experiences.

Experiences of working in partnership

People working in partnerships bring with themvaried baggage. For some it is a delegated taskfrom a major agency and they may, on behalf oftheir organisation, serve on many partnerships.For others, such service provides an opportunityto contribute, as they may have been selectedthrough private contacts or local pressure torepresent the voluntary or the community sector.Among these, some partners will have experienceof a number of partnerships and comparativejudgements can be arrived at. As one partnernoted:

“Partnership is an ‘industry’ now. I am‘collaborated out’ ... you shake a treethese days and a partnership falls out ofit.” (Partner representative, DP)

For others, this may be their sole experience andtheir judgement of it is framed through one modelof procedure and practice, from theirexpectations, or through the rhetoric ofexpectation surrounding partnership working inthe public domain. Each will travel with theirown expectations of potential outputs, someseeking a fair return for their investment in theannual statutory balance sheets, others wishing to


4

26


see outputs for their area of interest, and otherssimply grateful to see small advances indevelopment of whatever type. The time given tosuch activity may be regular or occasional, paid orvoluntary, limited or extensive. Judgements madeon the experience of partnership working reflectthese varied backgrounds of participants and, insuch circumstances, their reflections on theirexperiences are inevitably going to be positiveand negative, diverse and conflicting.

Cross-sectoral representation andparticipation by partners

In all of the partnerships commented on in theseinterviews a balance of cross-sectoralrepresentation has been achieved, but thepresence of different sectors, while appearinginclusive, does not always lead to equalparticipation. Therefore, the experience ofpartnership working is for many partnersproblematic. In most partnerships, an opendistinction is drawn between partners who arethere fundamentally because they are funders,

Box 7: Advantages and disadvantages of partnership working: the views oflead partners and coordinators

Advantages

• Greater credibility with funding organisations (range of partners involved)

• Sharing of finance

• Economies of scale in discussion and delivery

• Sharing of expertise (cross fertilisation of ideas/coordination/cooperation)

• Avoidance of work duplication and wasted effort

• Independent decision making

• Greater legitimacy (more accountable and inclusive – community engagement)

Disadvantages

• Policy can be driven by funding not need

• Partner status can depend on funding input leading to inequality between partners

• Problems can arise in coordinating the actions of different partners

• Establishing trust between partners can take time

• Different partners may make unequal contributions

• Dependence on a few key actors

• Problems can arise in sustaining partnership engagement

• Policy making can be slowed down

27

directly or through matched funding of theinitiative, and those who are there to facilitatedelivery. Invariably these roles parallel thedivision between those with statutoryresponsibilities and those who are present in thesearch for broader voluntary or communityrepresentation. Inevitably, this produces a cleardemarcation of roles and authority within thepartnership from the outset that can only betranscended by time and mutual commitment tothe broader, shared goals of partnership working.For funding partners their position is obvious:

“I suppose I am there to represent theborough council ... but basically I reporton things that we are helping to fund.”(Partner representative, FP)

“We are the main partners because we arefunding the partnership ... without thisfunding the partnership wouldn’t exist.”(Partner representative, FP)

This position structures their relationship withothers:

“I am on the group because I represent acommunity project that has come up fromthe community and I possibly have quite alot in common with the aims of the group.And it is good that there is the odd personlike me on the group because there is stillheavy representation from the statutorysector.” (Partner representative, DP)

“Partners not bringing funding to the tableare not always regarded as equalpartners.” (Partner representative, DP)

However, others see their role rather differently asa catalyst to partnership activity, working togenerate the type of ‘joined-up’ thinking that therhetoric of partnership espouses, but even herefinancial imperatives are critical.

“I think that our role is to link oneregeneration programme with another ...and this has helped to provide matchedfunding for different projects.” (Partnerrepresentative)

Consequently, these judgements shape the viewsof the roles of others within the partnership. AsBox 8 illustrates, opinions about other partnersclearly relate directly to their funding roles andhow they are delivered.

When difficulties arise in delivering that role thencriticisms emerge. One chair said: “X [funders] arebloody useless. It is an administrative chore forthem to consider what we are doing”.

In contrast, those participating for representativeor delivery purposes, drawn from the communityor voluntary sector, are seen to perform a differentfunction and are judged according to their inputby others (Box 9).

Here, the expectations against which they arejudged reflect their level of interest, their degree

Box 8: Funding roles“The district councils, as well as the county council are key partners in what goes on ... they provide themoney.” (Partner representative, FP)

“The paternalistic view of local authorities is still prevalent in some instances.” (Partner representative, FP)

“One local authority partner said, ‘You are not a true partner as you are not contributing any money...’. Itwas just about turf wars at the beginning.” (Partner representative, FP)

“I would suspect that the partners putting in the money are the crucial ones.” (Partner representative, FP)

“The roles of the other partners are to provide matching funds.” (Coordinator)

“To get commitment from partners you need to ask for money.” (Partner representative, FP)


28


of sectionalism, the clarity of their purpose andcommitment to partnership practice. This canundermine their authority in debate or allow theirvoices to be heard only on particular topics and itmay create a sense of exclusion from key aspectsof discussion and lead to frustration.

For the practice of partnership working to besuccessful there clearly needs to be a coalition ofblended interests where all feel equal participants.Adequate and inclusive representation isimportant, as is a sense of inclusion with clearroles and achievements, as indicated below:

“The feeling is [one] of having adequaterepresentation in [the community].”(Partner representative, DP)

“We are there with community interests ...we are not made to feel as if we are justfiltering community ideas through ... we

are part of the whole thing.” (Partnerrepresentative, FP)

“Local partnerships have securedcommunity involvement through therunning of projects.” (Coordinator)

In practice such inclusion is often hard to achieve,but some of the difficulties that have beenexperienced may arise through inadequaterepresentation of certain key groups in some ofthese partnerships which in turn contributes to thedominance of the statutory sector:

“There isn’t that much grassrootsinvolvement in LEADER at the moment ...if there were just a few morerepresentatives from the grassroots orfrom the parishes then that would help.”(Partner representative, DP)

Box 9: Delivery partners seen as ...

Interested participant

“The parish council representative is quite active and is genuinely interested, so I would say that he is oneof the better members of the group.” (Partner representative, DP)

Sectional participant

“The YFC [Young Farmers’ Club] is stereotyped by other partners as just having the same views as thefarming unions.” (Partner representative, FP)

“Some of the councillors in X felt that the aims and objectives of the partnership were actually districtcouncil functions and so it was lucky that there was an understanding within the council more generallythat these were actually partnership functions and not district council functions.” (Partner representative,DP)

Supportive or reluctant participant

“Community councils are an ‘intermediary’ ... they feed things through that are coming up from localcommunities and vice versa.” (Coordinator)

“The community councils can be very issue-orientated and see funding structures as impeding programmesof work.” (Partner representative, FP)

“There is probably a handful of local businesses that you could count on one hand that have given support.”(Partner representative, DP)

“I think that X has recognised that she does not have time to do all the work so the initiative has spread thecapacity building workload out across other agencies.” (Partner representative, FP)

29

“Most people on our committee tend to beelderly white males.” (Coordinator)

“Our problem is that the majority ofbusinesses have under five employees, sothey haven’t got the resources to providesignificant amounts of funding or otherresources.” (Partner representative, FP)

Much depends on how representative partners areenrolled (discussed in Chapter 3) and this cancarry through into working practice. Often theavailability of time and strong local interestencourages particular participants. For certainkey roles, a representative from particularorganisations may be called upon.

Often, whatever the representation, many deliverypartners feel that they are secondary in theprocess of debate and that either the Chair or thedominant funding agencies exert tight control onpartnership operation. Box 10 illustrates thereactions that occur across the range ofpartnerships surveyed about the way manyoperate, which suggests that far from producingopen and equal engagement, in many casespartnership operation is far from smooth.Coalitions of interest often develop that workagainst the full inclusion of all partners; as aresult, decisions may be taken with littleconsultation or no more than token discussion.This can lead to a sense of exclusion and todissatisfaction with the uneven engagement andoutcome of partnership working.

These findings indicate that the engagement ofpartners in partnership working is uneven andthat the practices which are developing are raisinginteresting questions about how partnershipsmight be made more democratic and producemore effective participation. Some of thesedifficulties may arise from the character of theparticipants themselves and from the culture andattitudes that have dominated past ruraldevelopment and regeneration practices; othersappear to emerge from the operational contexts ofpartnership working.

Organisation contexts and partnership problems

The organisational structure of a partnership playsa key role in shaping its effectiveness andinfluencing the experiences of those who givetime to it (Box 11). While partnerships needeffective leadership to shape the trajectory and

pace of partnership initiatives, such strongleadership may also generate tensions. The realcost and time cost of working together over anextended period can lessen commitment, whilethe frequency of meetings and their location mayalso contribute to how partners react to thepartnership process. These factors are critical increating the opportunity for partners to develop aconsensual strategy and frequently, if not properlyhandled, dissatisfactions arise with the process ofpartnership engagement.

Problems that emerge from ineffective partnershipworking may arise from five key factors (Box 12).Irritations may occur as a result of equivocalcommitment from key partners expressed throughattitudes in meetings, perhaps arising because ofthe delegated representative’s uncertainty over theimportance of the initiative from their organisation’sperspective. This can work both ways; as onechair of a facilitative partnership stated:

“The individuals representing a partner ona committee of a partnership can be clearabout the role of the partnership, but thisis not always the case in terms of thepartner organisation itself.”

It may be reflected in poor attendance at meetingsand can contribute to ‘what’s in it for us attitude’.Invariably this arises because of uncertainty overthe purpose of the initiative and how that purposemight be realised. Interestingly, this is often aproblem that faces facilitative partnerships rathermore than those involved directly in delivery. Itmay also lead to the encouragement of an overlapwith the work of other agencies, differentialexpectations and to the withholding of fundingcontributions or to the search for direct funding toparticular ends.

When partners are uncertain contributors thenpartnerships flounder and the experience ofworking within them – far from leading to thepooling of resources and ideas, consensualdecision making and the avoidance of replicationof activities – becomes fraught with tensions. Allpartnerships have points where they struggle tofind ways of handling these issues; many rapidlyoutgrow such difficulties and develop a willingand committed engagement with the task and thisis part of the ‘learning curve’ that constitutes thedevelopment of effective partnership practice.However, it is important to chart these difficultiesthrough partners’ experiences, for without thesepartnership working might appear straightforward.


30


Box 10: Problems in partnership working

Control

“There is a perception of the public sector having all of the control and making all of the decisions.”(Partner representative, DP)

“The idea of community development is fine as long as they [statutory organisations] make all of thedecisions.” (Coordinator)

“Any dissent is frowned upon. The project officer has much influence.” (Partner representative, DP)

Internal coalitions of interest

“Similar sector partners are more integrated.” (Coordinator)

“There is a tendency for statutory organisations to talk amongst themselves.” (Partner representative, DP)

“Partners from different sectors ‘group off’.” (Partner representative, DP)

“I think that when we started there were certain individuals on the LDG [local development group] whotended to discuss things in their own small groups ... in the early days you would tend to get people thatknew each other well sitting together, and they would have little conversations with each other.... I didactually complain because everybody at the opposite end of the table seemed to be talking and a few of usdown the other end seemed to be left out. But involvement has now widened and everybody is morerelaxed now. It’s natural, isn’t it?” (Partner representative, DP)

Lack of consultation

“The fact of the matter is that people like making decisions without consulting others because it is doesseem to be based very much on the recommendation of the project officer.” (Partner representative, DP)

“There has been no ‘real’ consultation with communities.... You just go ahead and you do it.” (Chair)

Sense of exclusion

“We get ‘consulted’ ... but I am not happy with the way things are done.... They send us an appraisal form,but not the application form of a group wanting funding and so this makes it very difficult to know whatthe thing was about in the first place ... and they also don’t give us much time to examine it and say thatthey will take a nil response as an agreement.” (Partner representative, FP)

Inadequate/uneven initiatives

“Partnerships often focus their activities where previous initiatives have taken place as links have alreadybeen established with local groups in that area.” (Partner representative, FP)

31

Box 11: Organisational problems in partnership working

Dominant chair or partner

“If the chair of a partnership has too much power then this can cause disaffection amongst the rest of thepartners.” (Coordinator)

Meetings

“What happens is that you don’t get full attendance at all the meetings ... people who don’t attend arereminded that they should do so.” (Partner representative, FP)

“The partnership group only meets every six months. So you could hardly call this active membership.”(Partner representative, FP)

Time and resource costs

“It can take a significant period of time before partners feel ready to input readily into partnership debatesas they are often not sure of the agenda of the partnership or other partners initially.” (Partner representative,FP)

“We lose out compared to some other partners in that most of the organisations that are in partnership area lot bigger than what we are and so have the time and the financial and staffing resources to contributeeffectively.” (Partner representative, FP)

“It is embarrassing to say that [X partnership] has actually been my responsibility for 18 months now ... butit is problematic to cover everything that you want to cover ... so in practical terms I have attended veryfew meetings.” (Partner representative, FP)

“What you have is a lot of professionals there who are on at least £20,000 a year ... and to reach the mostsimple decision there are 18 people there probably on about £20 an hour for about three hours. So it ismind-boggling how much money is wasted.” (Partner representative, DP)

“The local authority recognises that it now has to work in partnership but has also realised the costs ofdoing this in that it has had to restructure its staff and departments in order to make corporate responses.”(Partner representative, FP)

Social relations personal links and tensions

“People work with other individuals they believe they can get the most benefit from working with.”(Partner representative, FP)

“There has to be consensus for effective partnership working.” (Partner representative, FP)

“There are no noticeable tensions probably because we are covering a small area and we all tend to knoweach other and we have all met in other roles or in other ways.” (Partner representative, DP)

“I think that there might be a bit of resentment from town councillors because they are not in LEADER II.”(Partner representative, DP)

“It is a well-known fact that we have had lots of problems with Government Office procedures because wehaven’t worked with them before.” (Partner representative, FP)


32


Box 12: Ineffective partnership working

Equivocal commitment

“I don’t think that ‘the partnership’ has worked at all ... what we needed was commitment from partnersofficers ... we haven’t got this as well as we would like ... we have probably got it better from the voluntarysector ... the statutory bodies hardly deliver at all really.” (Chair)

“The Government Office for the West Midlands has representation although ... they rarely attend meetings....They see the delivery end of it as being our responsibility and not theirs.” (Partnership representative, FP)

Uncertainty of agenda

“There are one or two others there who really have no idea ... they are not quite sure why they are there.”(Partnership representative, DP)

“You go to the first couple of meetings and you think, ‘Perhaps this is me – I just haven’t tuned into this’.But then after two or three meetings you think, ‘Oh, it isn’t me’. So I thought that it couldn’t operate likethis ... so after a couple of meetings I started to voice concerns politely at first, and then with increasingforce as time went on because other partners just didn’t have any idea as to what the partnership shouldbe doing.” (Partnership representative, FP)

Overlap with the work of other agencies

“If a partner wants the partnership to serve its own agenda, this can have knock-on effects for the otherpartners involved, and could result in partners leaving partnerships if, for example, the work of the partnershipbecame quite politicised.” (Coordinator)

“There have been tensions between the partnership and partners because of replication of activities.”(Partnership representative, FP)

Funding

“Funders can heavily influence the work programme of the partnership.” (Partnership representative, FP)

“The lead funder doesn’t know what it is funding ... I try to tell them what we are about ... ultimately byusing words of one syllable.... We are keeping a very close eye on them ... they seem incapable ofunderstanding what the partnership is about.” (Chair)

Different expectations

“The voluntary sector is too fragmented and needs to organise itself better.” (Chair)

“Cultural barriers exist between many partners, such as the local authorities and the police, because theywant things done yesterday.” (Partnership representative, FP)

“Somebody from the voluntary sector wanted to do something but other partners were looking for thehard economic outputs.” (Partnership representative, DP)

“I think that it is a well-known fact that the private sector doesn’t see youth projects as being theirconcern.” (Partnership representative, DP)

33

The independence and autonomy of partnerships

While operational procedures and partnershippractices may be far from perfect, much has beenmade of the potential this mode of operationoffers to address local problems with localsolutions drawing on the skills of key local actors.To some extent this is certainly the case withmany delivery partnerships, where the communityhas been engaged in reviewing and appraisinglocal needs and developing strategies to addressthem. It is also equally true that regionally- orlocally-based agencies involved with developmentare clearly well informed of the regenerationneeds of their territories and how these might bemet. Such knowledge has informed thedevelopment of facilitative partnership strategies.However, funding programmes for regenerationprogrammes (invariably with a requirement thatpartnership working is adopted) contain withinthem other more specific requirements thatinevitably shape many partners’ experience ofjoint working.

The authority of both statutory agency andcommunity may be tempered by the requirementto work in partnership. As one partner in adelivery agency noted:

“When you are working in a partnership,there is always a loss of sovereignty ... soyou end up doing something which wasn’tquite what you wanted to do.”

Often, however, it is evident that any innovationthat might arise from the blending of theirrespective capacities is to a large extent restrictedby the control that arises through programmespecification and bidding criteria.

As Box 13 illustrates it is apparent that manypartners feel that the prior designation of targetspecification and the auditing of outputs becomecritical factors in shaping their perspective on theprocess. Partnerships, especially those that aredelivery-focused, tend to be output driven. It canbe difficult to achieve the necessary outputswithout agreeing to accept all the local initiativesproposed, irrespective of their quality. Given thatdelivery plans have to be drawn up annuallywhich detail all outputs, the indicators that theseare measured against and the tight control thatemerges is invariably viewed as constraining. Thelack of adaptability to new goals in someprogrammes is also commented on. This

inflexibility may result from unrealisticspecification in the original bid, but can alsoemerge through circumstances that have changedor new opportunities that arise. By allowing forthese possibilities, partnership engagement couldbecome more responsive and be seen to benefitfrom the growing experience of the partners.

Interestingly, one partner reflecting on herexperience commented that partnership workingis a new form of government strategy rather thana new form of empowerment:

“At the outset it was a completely newprocess with a different language. And itseemed very prescribed. You often lookat things and think whether it is simplyfinding another way of funding somethingthat they used to fund.” (Partnerrepresentative, FP)

What these findings suggest is that partnershipworking is a regulated task with clearresponsibilities – money is never providedwithout accountability – but that theseresponsibilities need to be more explicitly evidentin the promotion of partnership engagement. Fartoo often the process is promoted as enabling andintegrative, which it can be, without recognisingthat a key measure of capacity building is thegrowth in an ability to define deliverable andappropriate projects to necessary programmedeadlines with purposive outputs, so that thecommunity see a product for their efforts andfunding bodies see an output for their investment.In the light of these findings it is not surprisingthat many partners working in partnership havelittle sense of their own autonomy orindependence as part of the process. The projectfor many is viewed as both enabling andconstraining.


34


Box 13: Constraints on partnership practice

Bureaucracy and control

“Funding bodies are picky and make things too bureaucratic. And so it can be difficult to develop yourown plans of action. We have to operate within very strict funding guidelines.... I have the feeling that weare being ‘manoeuvred’ or ‘manipulated’ by where X wants us to go.” (Partnership representative, DP)

Bidding criteria and control

“There was certainly quite a lot of flak from local people who said, ‘We have won £1 million – now hang ona bit; we don’t want you to do X, we want you to do Y’. But the response from the organisations involvedin the bid was that they couldn’t change anything that had been approved by the funders in the originalApproval Document.” (Partnership representative, FP)

“We end up having to fit the bidding ... but if you are not careful you end up doing something that actuallydidn’t need to be done.” (Partnership representative, DP)

“There are certain projects that are scored in a way which will mean that they succeed to fit guidelines.Other partnership projects are dealt with more severely.” (Partnership representative, DP)

Audit/output control

“It is the other thing about having targets that must be met within certain years, and about having ‘spendprofiles’.” (Partnership representative, DP)

“Funding organisations have great power locally in guiding partnership outputs.” (Partnership representative,DP)

“The European bid was drawn up in great haste and landed the partnership with a number of fundamentalproblems ... where it all went pear-shaped was that somebody wrote in that there would be X outputs in Xcommunities ... and this completely missed the point that the partnership was not directly about doing thisand saddled it with unachievable outcomes.” (Partnership representative, FP)

“There are times when you have got to say, ‘We have got to get these outputs; where can we get them frombest?’. So you might pick one target area that you are pretty sure you will get results on. And then thisgives you more time with the ones that need a little bit more effort.” (partnership representative, FP)

“We made a mistake by saying to funders that the partnership could deliver certain outputs which werenot really related to the focus of the partnership.” (Partnership representative, FP)

Approval of outputs

“It is difficult to feel that you are assessing projects ... there is a tendency to want to rubber-stamp things.”(Partnership representative, FP)

“Because the projects are so broadband, as long as you get somebody with the right qualifications to say,‘Oh well, it looks good to me’, then nobody bothers you ... so nobody is really saying, ‘Is [what you aredoing] terribly good value for money?’.” (Regional partnership coordinator)

35

Working in facilitative and delivery partnerships

The challenges and constraints that have beenoutlined concerning partnership working ingeneral map themselves out in the experience ofboth facilitative and delivery partnerships in ourcase studies. However, the task and responsibilityof each type of partnership is rather different andso some of the specific pressures felt by thoseinvolved in these partnerships with differentremits are worth specifying. Details of partners’reflections on the operation of facilitativepartnerships are presented in Boxes 14-17.

As Box 14 illustrates, positive experiences ofpartnership working develop through clear aimsand working with the ‘right’ people, and trustemerges through the establishment of identifiableroles as does a sense of inclusion and effectiveorganisation. Central to this is evidentcommitment to a ‘way of working’ and to theownership of the partnership process by theagencies involved (Box 15).

Facilitative partnerships carry the task ofcoordinating practice and policy betweenstatutory and other sectors, developing enablingstrategies and mobilising activity at thecommunity level. Such tasks depend ondeveloping effective shared visions and policiesfor implementation. This inevitably posesproblems and requires both adaptability inprogramme specification and adequate resourcingto meet the tasks proposed (Box 16). This occursfrequently across wide territorial areas whereresponses to initiatives can be uneven andtherefore the territorial reach of facilitativepartnerships and their capacity to develop localspecificity (Box 17) becomes critical in theeffective implementation of partnership policy.

Here lies clear evidence of the desire to create abridge between top-down policy requirementsand local needs.

Much has been made of the capacity thatpartnerships have to blend ‘top-down’ and‘bottom-up’ initiatives, but as already notedtensions do remain in the working out of statutoryand community involvement. Interestingly,however, both groups of actors are aware of thedifficulty in achieving this integration.

At the level of delivery partnerships this isexpressed through recognition that local work isnot enough and regeneration policy needs to beintegrated with wider strategic thinking. Thispoint was made by the chair of a deliverypartnership, by a local authority member onanother and by a number of other partnersworking in such partnerships. All emphasisedthat lasting benefit could only be achieved ifdecisions matched local strategic priorities andactivities, otherwise replication of provisionoccurs serving too local a market and is unlikelyto be sustainable. This recognition of the widercase may be seen as one realistic change inattitude that has emerged through partnershipengagement in delivery partnerships and it doescreate a bridge between the top-down concernsfor effective planned regeneration and the desireof communities to see their needs satisfied locally.

Box 13 continued

Need for shift in outputs over time

“You need the confidence to say, ‘Obviously when this was put together ... the ideas were fabulous at thetime. But over a period ... and through experience the outputs that we originally thought were going to beappropriate have got to change.’ And so you need to be confident to say that the programme needsremoulding.” (Partnership representative, FP)

“It takes time for funders to realise that the nature of outputs may change over the lifetime of thatpartnership.” (Partnership representative, FP)


36


Box 14: Key issues in the operation of partnerships

Clarity of aims

“Partners need to be clear as to what is the focus and remit of the partnership.” (Coordinator)

Right people

“We are a very slim partnership but we can get away with it because people are familiar with each other –there are the right people there to make it function.” (Partnership representative, FP)

Trust

“All partners need to trust each other and have the same aims and objectives.” (Coordinator)

Clear knowledge and expectation of roles

“It is difficult to control the work programme of such partnerships on a part-time basis because partnersare unsure how much time and energy is being put into the partnership by the coordinator.” (Partnershiprepresentative, FP)

“Partnerships work fitfully because at anyone time, people only commit a small proportion of their timeand resources.” (Chair)

Operate inclusively

“Partnerships that have a lot of partners have to show that they are including all the views of the partnersinvolved to work correctly.” (Coordinator)

Good organisation

“Administrative arrangements need to be addressed at an early stage for the partnership to functionefficiently.” (Partner representative, FP)

“The partnership’s management group didn’t have much control over the partnership ... there were justmasses of paper chucked onto the table when you got there ... so it was not very clear what the point of itall was.” (Partner representative, FP)

“Where the management group of a partnership is not formally constituted this can cause problems asfunders tend not to commit funding for more than twelve months because of the restrictions placed onthem [in terms of their ability to commit funds by government bodies].” (Partner representative, FP)

37

Box 15: Commitment and ownership in partnerships

Commitment to a way of working

“If the various bodies are just paying lip-service to the partnership, and it doesn’t actually change theirbehaviour in any shape or form ... and so in itself it is neither here or there.” (Partner representative, FP)

“Partnership working itself needs to be viewed as integral to each partner’s way of working outside of thepartnership.” (Partner representative, FP)

Ownership by partner groups and a commitment to dissemination

“There is a need for commitment from each partner and the cascading of ideas through partnerorganisations.” (Coordinator)

“I worked in a local authority on a joint (rural) SRB programme with another local authority and a lot ofthat was really about, ‘How can we shaft the others without seeming uncooperative?’.” (Regional partnershipcoordinator)

“Organisations that have a territorial scale of operation greater than that of the partnership itself oftenhave difficulty in ‘cascading’ the importance of being involved in that particular partnership throughorganisational divisions/departments outside the territorial remit of the partnership.” (Partner representative,FP)

Box 16: Adaptability and adequate resourcing

Adaptability

“Processes need to change to have meaningful involvement, rather than for it just to expect it happeningat the top table.” (Partner representative, FP)

“Chasing targets is a problem ... if the partnership wanted to change its structure and foci to reflectchanges within the partnership then it probably couldn’t do this ... targets are rubbish and you cannotwork in a partnership-type manner to achieve targets ... what’s the point in evaluating partnership activitiesif you cannot change the work programme.” (Coordinator)

“You need to have a flexible funding framework otherwise you can end up channelling millions of poundsof funding into parishes which have extremely high rates of unemployment (for example, 50%) at a firstglance, but in reality had eight people unemployed out of a total population of 16 people in that area! ...However, these eight people are still just as much in need on an individual basis as others elsewhere andthat is why area-based regeneration can be a problem – it is not the area that needs the money but thepeople.” (Partner representative, FP)

Adequate resources

“The partnership is only going to work really if it is better resourced, and if there is greater commitmentfrom the partner agencies at the most senior level.” (Chair)

“When the budget of the main partnership funder was slashed, we had to look for alternative sources offunding and this, in turn, changed the territory of operation and the way of working of the partnership.”(Partner representative, FP)


38


A further problem arises in delivery partnershipsof raising awareness in the local community andencouraging engagement. In such partnerships,partners are aware of how difficult it is to mobiliseand empower those residents they represent.These concerns are captured by comments drawnfrom an interview with a chair of one suchpartnership:

“Many individuals in rural areas are notclued up as to how to obtain sponsorship– we presume that people do know abouthow to go about obtaining commercialsponsorship but this shouldn’t beassumed.... You need huge publicity ofpartnership activities locally – a PR personfor a partnership is a very good idea.”

Partners are also very conscious of theexpectations for delivery that they have to meet,whether it is in structuring work programmes or inraised expectations, as one reflected:

“Less successful projects can occur due toloss of impetus, initiators moving on andover-estimation of effects that projectmight have.”

Although the experience of partnership workingat a community level seen from the residents’point of view has not been the concern of thisproject, there is a clear need for work on thistheme to be undertaken. However, our evidencedoes reveal that while community engagement inpartnership practice is essential, it must be apractical engagement centred on what can

Box 17: Territorial competence and local specificity

Territorial competence

“We are tending to spend more time on partnership X because it is solely working within the county wherewe operate, and not outside our boundaries.” (partner representative, FP)

“X initiative was about need. But it is also about opportunity. And balancing these two differing aspectsis difficult. If you then geographically restrict yourself then the ‘opportunity’ bit starts to become moredifficult. However, there is no point in spending money in areas that don’t need it. So there has to be somesort of geographical targeting for certain things.” (partner representative, FP)

“There are problems with geographical targeting in that you end up with ‘dead zones’ ... for example, ‘deeprural’ areas suffer from significant ‘rural’ problems ... they have geographical distance and location problemsand so these areas get the funding. You have also got ‘middle of town’ areas which have their ownregeneration budgets from Europe and elsewhere. And then you have a gap in-between which is neitherbut where communities may be three miles nearer to the town but are not that much better off thancommunities in the ‘deep rural’ areas – the bus still doesn’t go through villages in these areas and thedoctor and jobs are seven miles away instead of 10 miles away. But that doesn’t make it easier to get tosuch places.” (partner representative, FP)

Local specificity

“We have shifted towards working with X ... because they have got a clear strategy for involving thecommunity.” (coordinator)

“It would be good to have local partnerships set up and to delegate grants to them so that they coulddelegate funding themselves to areas in most need based on their local knowledge.” (partner representative,FP)

“To make a partnership work that is focused on communities, you need a consistent view from a localcommunity as to what needs to be done. Local organisations that the partnership can facilitate also needto be committed.” (partner representative, FP)

39

realistically be achieved. As one partnercommented:

“You need to have a balance betweenhaving adequate communityrepresentation on the partnerships and tohave something that is practical at thesame time.”

Where a partnership is focused on delivery at acommunity level there should be delegation ofdecision making and responsibilities to that locallevel where capacity has been sufficientlydeveloped to undertake such activities. Where ithas not, both delivery and facilitative partnershipsshould work with local rural communities todevelop such capacities and have sufficientresources and time to undertake such activities(for example, training).

These findings add to those discussed earlierdescribing the experience of partners and allowthe development of an outline of what mightconstitute effective partnership working.

Towards best practice in effectivepartnership working

To claim that it is possible to identify precisely allthe elements that make for successful andeffective partnerships and partnership working inrural regeneration would be inappropriate. Manypractitioners in rural regeneration would assertthat they have been ‘working in partnership’ withrural residents, communities and organisationsthroughout their professional lives and that therecent formulation of a partnership mode ofengagement is nothing new. What is relativelynew in a rural context, however, is therequirement to tackle regeneration issues througha designated and formal cross-sectoral approach.This coupled with the necessity for communityengagement in the partnership process is framingregeneration as a task that involves working withpeople rather than for them. In suchcircumstances there are inevitably trade-offs interms of independence, power and centralcontrol.

The imperative for this change in practice hascome from three sources. From residents andcommunities determined to meet their needsthrough local actions, from Brussels in theirexpectations over the use of EU Funds and from

Whitehall, Cardiff and Edinburgh in their searchfor new modes of policy delivery. To these afourth initiator might be added, namely the rangeof governmental and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (quangos), whichprior to the insistence on this mode of workinghad already recognised the contribution thatmight come from ‘joined-up’ practice in deliveringpolicy. In such a context, with its emphasis onboth a collective policy and local commitment,any recommendations concerning how such astrategy can maximise its effectiveness must bearin mind two critical factors: time and people.

In the search for models of best practice far toolittle attention has been given to the ‘learningcurve’ along which new policy instruments haveto travel to maximise the expectations held ofthem. It is apparent from the research undertakenthat many engaged in partnership activity andthose directly involved with working inpartnership travel willingly down that road, butare frequently frustrated by its uneven surface.This is not to argue that they have been sent thewrong way, but rather to suggest that they needto learn from the wrong turns they have taken.The evidence presented here indicates that manyparticipants are learning fast how best to navigatethis path, but successful journeying and practicetakes time.

Time is needed to prepare and train for a newform working, both at statutory level and in thecommunity. In the former case impatience canarise through the unprofessional and collectivenature of decision making. In the latter, priorexperience can play a key role in acceleratingengagement and building capacity in localcommunities, but where such engagement has nottaken place then the delivery of outputs slowsdown and the process of partnership working isslow to develop:

“Where groups were already in place andwere not set up to access funds, theyappear to have been able to moveforward more quickly to addressregeneration issues.” (Partnershiprepresentative, FP)

It therefore takes time to mobilise the communityand certainly to prepare them for the task ofarguing their case and balancing their needs withthose of others in a formal setting. The sameargument can be advanced for statutory bodies


40


and their representatives in adjusting to this newform of delivery.

Given the importance of this key factor oncepartnership working has become established,projects themselves take time in defining needsthrough appraisals or in getting developmentsstarted. This can cause further frustrations.

“Speed is of the essence – I keep comingback to the smaller applicant that has a‘spark’ or germ of an idea. And they oftenput it to the community and they want totake it forward. But then the trouble isthat nothing happens for eight weeks orso. So the impetus is lost and once thathas gone you will never be able tomotivate that group again.” (Coordinator)

Once established, the issue of length ofengagement and the time available to buildeffective partnerships is critical, but rarelyrecognised when the emphasis is on deliveringoutputs and investing resources:

“The priority has been to spend money –‘no messing about’ and so less time hasbeen available for communityconsultation.” (Coordinator)

In an organisational sense, the nature of the fixedduration of some delivery partnerships generatesparticular pressures to spend money and,consequently, there is selectivity in the time spenton certain developments to achieve this.

“I have to prioritise where I can makemost impact.” (Partner, FP)

Then, once moving, the fixed period ofpartnership programmes provides uncertainopportunities for continuation and frustration mayarise that capacities now built become effectively‘mothballed’ with no clear future.

“As it is now we are starting to get into itand get more experienced and people arestarting to come to us with their projects.But now the whole thing is about to stop– gone. And it doesn’t even peter out. Itstops dead. So it would be better to havea longer timescale.” (Partner, DP)

“From a strategic point of view it wouldbe crazy to wrap everything up under anexisting programme and then six months

later try and get everybody back together... so we need funding for any interimphase.” (Partner, FP)

In any consideration of effective partnershipworking and future partnership development farmore attention needs to given to the length oftime necessary to build such partnerships anddevelop experience of their working practices.Only then can an adequate assessment of theprocess be attempted.

The second key variable in partnership working isthe people involved. In judging the effectivenessof policy and procedures often far too littleattention is given to the role of key individuals inshaping that process. All the evidence presentedhere indicates that particular people matterwhether as leaders or participants.

In many rural initiatives operating at a communitylevel it is the role of such individuals, whetherparish or community councillors, local leaders inthe teaching, religious and medical arena,volunteers in various aspects of community life orsimply committed residents who have struggled todevelop local initiatives. This same group mayhave been proactive in their response to LEADERor Heritage Fund or Lottery initiatives andwillingly engage in the opportunity that newforms of partnership working offer. They areoften already aware of the challenges ofmobilising local people, satisfying their needs foroutcomes and of nurturing and developing localcapacities to achieve these regeneration goals. Asyet, unfortunately, many places lack such leadersand building the capacities that will allow them toemerge may take both time and a change inattitudes towards commitment and thecommunity.

At an agency level, there are also people deeplycommitted to inclusive policy development. Inmany cases, the pressure to move towards moreinclusive modes of consultation and delivery hasbeen driven by their reading of regenerationrequirements and the need to develop effectivepolicy instruments to deliver them. Often withinthese organisations such views may be contested,but there is a growing realisation at this level too,that partnership working is becoming an essentialtrajectory for future policy delivery.

As Box 18 indicates, successful partnershipsdepend on people to work effectively, whether asleaders or participating partners. Developing

41

such characteristics can best be achieved byhighlighting those elements that contribute toeffective practice and then seeking to developsuch capacities in those who participate.

These issues all need to be considered indeveloping criteria to benchmark the performanceof partnerships. Our experience of listening topeople who willingly give of their time to thismode of working is that a series of checklists,rather than one, are appropriate in assessing theeffectiveness of those partnerships that are inoperation.

As noted in the introduction, from a policyperspective such a checklist might include a clearpurpose and objective, appropriate cross-sectionalrepresentation, adequate resources, effectiveprocess and organisation and appropriate outputs.In those partnerships that are succeeding, all suchcharacteristics are met and are invariablyrecognised by those who participate.

This study, in specifying a checklist from thediscussions that have taken place, would includethese criteria, but add additional elements. Theimpressions we have gained from our respondentsindicate that, as Table 4 records, effectivepartnership working can be judged in terms of notonly the regeneration product, but also the qualityof the process that produces those outcomes.

Although considerable attention has been given inthis chapter to the difficulties that arise fromworking in partnership, these findings suggestthat those involved see enormous potential in thismode of working. They may at times recognisethe constraints imposed by the process with itsemphasis on outputs and be sensible to theresponsibilities and consequences of participatoryrather than central, programmed delivery. Theseinsights shape their own capacities to act bothinside and outside the partnerships they work inand emphasise the challenges facing integratedand participatory rural regeneration strategies.


42


Box 18: Key factors in effective partnership working

Process

“Partnerships that develop naturally are the best ones ... you know, people are used to forging partnershipsin Wales because they have had to ... people are sociable and they like talking to each other.” (Partnerrepresentative, FP)

Leadership

“The chairs of the working groups are the key to getting things done.” (Partner representative, FP)

“Chairmen need to be experienced.” (Partner representative, DP)

“The partners involved do not always use me as effectively as they might ... because I have a certainamount of ‘reach’ simply because I have been around the system for so long.” (Chair)

“Good chairmanship and good meetings help. It is no good having the best bombs in the world if nobodyhas organised the feeding of the troops and the re-fuelling of the planes, and so on.” (Partner representative,FP)

“Our sustenance has been down to a number of key individuals, especially the chairperson. However ... thedanger when you have such activated individuals is that the rest of the partners are not really on board.”(Coordinator)

“New individuals representing partners on a partnership can be beneficial or detrimental to the partnership’sactivities – it can depend very much on their abilities and attitudes to working in partnership.” (Coordinator)

“I think that the development officer is the key person as there would certainly be the a danger of peoplerepresenting certain areas taking over the decision-making processes if this person wasn’t there.” (Partnerrepresentative, FP)

“Appointing the manager of the partnership was the best thing we have done ... it just wouldn’t happenotherwise ... but if he got fed up and left then the whole thing would fall as nobody would have theexpertise or knowledge to replace him.” (Partner representative, FP)

People

“One of the interesting features of area X is that there are incomers with professional skills and ‘outside’links, as well as people who have been in the area forever and have local roots.... And they talk to eachother and there seems to be a right balance. And this is a really powerful mixture.” (Regional partnershipcoordinator)

“The same organisation is now represented by a different individual and is much more active ... partner Xhardly ever turned up before ... so the perception of them is much more positive now.” (Partner representative,FP)

“You need sufficient representation from the local community and not too much representation from thestatutory sector....” (Partner representative, FP)

“A key element is commitment.” (Partner representative, DP)

“You have got to have the right people involved and they have to stick with it.” (Partner representative,DP)

43

Table 4: A checklist of effective partnership working

1. Pre-training to engage in partnership working(for example, visits to other partnerships, projects, preparecommunity groups, attendance at courses, and so on)

2. Adequate lead-in time for bidding

3. A clear focus, objective and mission for partnership action

4. Non-overlapping role with other agencies

5. A precise agenda for action

6. Definition of timescales for implementation

7. A selection of appropriate partners (for strategy formulation and/or policy delivery)

8. Commitment and informed understanding from all partners

9. Effective commitment and dissemination within partner organisationsto support representatives

10. Clear leadership from the chair

11. Mutual trust between partners

12. Effective delivery at officer level

13. Clear roles and respect between partners

14. Inclusive processes and shared expectations

15. Adequate funding contributions

16. Recognition of non-funding contributions

17. Minute meetings, define actions, set fixed delivery dates

18. Achievable and appropriate targets

19. A simplified auditing process

20. Flexibility in implementation strategy

21. Adequate time to achieve specified goals

22. A defined exit strategy

23. Long-term commitment

24. Other (please specify)


44


As the preceding chapters amply demonstrate, thediscourse and practice of partnership workingnow dominates the rural development arena.Rural government is no longer the province oflocal authorities, working in tandem with otherpublic sector agencies such as developmentboards and commissions. Instead we find awhole host of agencies now involved in ruralgovernance, drawn from the public, private andvoluntary sectors, and usually working ‘inpartnership’. However, this very prevalence cancause problems, in that partnership working hasbecome established and accepted, almost bydefault. As two of our interviewees said:

“Thirty years ago the county council wereall-powerful. They dealt with absolutely[emphasis original] everything. Andgradually their functions have beeneroded. And now everything is inpartnership.... Well, what I don’tunderstand, and what I want to ask you is,whose brainchild was this partnershipbusiness? Wasn’t it working wellpreviously when they had the oneorganisation that did everythingthemselves?”

“It would be just much more streamlinedand straightforward if we didn’t have towork in partnership. We could just goahead and do something without havingto consult. Partnership working takestime. Absolutely.”

Behind the almost uniform acceptance ofpartnerships as a ‘good thing’, there lies a wholehost of issues that need to be addressed in orderto promote effective rural regeneration strategies,which involve local people and promotecommunity development. The establishment of a

regeneration partnership does not guaranteebenefits for the various interests, which itrepresents, nor does it automatically lead to eithercommunity involvement or communitydevelopment. As this study has shown, theimpact of such schemes is critically dependent onthe processes, which are followed during theirestablishment and implementation. This in turnmeans that those charged with formulatingpolicies for rural regeneration need to think notonly about the aims and content of their variousprojects, but also about the processes throughwhich these can be most effectively implementedand delivered. One without the other will notwork. And, the establishment of successfulprocesses of partnership working cannot beassumed, but has to be built into the very fabric ofrural regeneration policy. This concluding sectiondevelops this theme and draws out theimplications of our research for practitioners andpolicy makers alike.

Resources and funding

We noted earlier how issues of resource can affectthe relationships between partners within apartnership. Given that partnerships are seenprimarily as a means of accessing funding,resource implications emerge as a key policyissue throughout, and indeed beyond, the life-span of the partnership. In particular, the currentinflexibility of funding arrangements stands out asa key concern, and we would stress the need forfunding guidelines and targets to be able to takeinto account the changing needs andcircumstances of the partnerships themselves(within limits of accountability and assurance).Future programmes must also recognise thatcommunity empowerment and capacity buildingis of necessity a long-term process, and that

Partnerships and ruralgovernance: implications forfuture strategy

5

45

sustainable benefits are gradually accrued overmany years. This contrasts markedly with theshort-term nature of most current regenerationfunding. Longer lead times are needed to allowworkable relationships to be established betweenthose involved in the new rural governance. Inaddition, dedicated ‘start-up’ funding (not tied tospecified outputs) may well be required beforethose resources associated with projectimplementation and delivery are drawn upon.

Scales and places of operation

A critical set of processes is centred around thescales and places within which rural regenerationpartnerships work, and the networks which areconsequently involved. Issues of scale should notbe reduced here to those of territorial coverage –for the scale of a partnership has implications forwhich organisations and individuals can andcannot be enrolled, for what can and cannot beachieved, and for which resources can and cannotbe accessed. The strong identification ofpartnerships with community engagement has,again implicitly, encouraged the view that thenew rural governance involves a re-scaling ofpower downwards, offering new possibilities ofendogenous, or bottom-up, development.However, a case can also be made that the newgovernance in fact involves a re-scaling ofgovernance upwards, to inter-county or regionallevels. Furthermore, where local scalepartnerships operate as part of a widerprogramme, as with LEADER or those funded bythe SRB in England, they may simultaneouslyinvolve a rescaling of power and governance bothupwards and downwards. However, as we noted,it tends to be the more focused, delivery-orientedpartnerships, of more limited duration, whichoperate locally. In contrast, the more strategic(and usually more powerful) facilitativepartnerships operate more at county or regionalscales. The question for policy makers toconsider is not so much at which scalespartnerships can operate at most effectively, butwhich types of partnerships should be operatingat which scales.

This can have strong implications for the ‘rural’nature of any particular rural partnership. Thenew governance may well consist of networksreaching well beyond the rural. While this canhave advantages for drawing in additionalresource and expertise, it can also involveindividuals and organisations that are representing

county, regional and even national interests,which may not necessarily be ‘rural’. The newscales of governance may also operate at an extra-rural level. The Mid Wales Division of the WelshDevelopment Agency, for instance, is part of anational organisation and has replaced theDevelopment Board for Rural Wales, whichpreviously had a purely rural remit. And the newRDAs in England, for example, each have a boardmember responsible for rural issues – but bydefinition this ensures that the rural agenda canbe somewhat forgotten, or at worst ignored, bythe rest of the board.

The situation is a complex one, and there is nosimple pattern emerging. What does seem to bethe case, however, is the continuing dominance ofthe public sector in both initiating and resourcingpartnership activity. Our research has suggestedthat very few partnerships emerge organicallyfrom the grassroots. Instead, the majority ofpartnerships are initiated at a higher level, oftenby public sector agencies in response tocompetitive funding programmes. In other words,the public sector – whether at county, regional,national or European level – acts as lead funderand chief organiser. It sets the rules of the game,and is able to determine the types of partnersenrolled, the life span of the partnership, itsworking practices and evaluation procedures, andits functional scope and territorial scale. Localauthorities and development agencies will alsooften provide office space and administrativesupport. As a result it might be argued that thenew rural governance has not, as is often claimed,involved a dispersal of state responsibilities butinstead has actually produced a new way ofdischarging what are still largely public sectorresponsibilities.

Where these duties are discharged is also ofimportance to policy makers and practitioners.The complexity of the new rural governance hasled to a very uneven implementation of policy.There has been a lack of regularity in theestablishment, structure and operation of ruralregeneration. Many were formed in response tocompetitions for limited funding opportunities,often tied to specific central initiatives, andconsequently regeneration organisations havebeen created to perform certain functions in somelocalities but not in others. The competitivepolicy mechanism promoted by such schemes asRural Challenge, SRB and LEADER results in‘winners’ and ‘losers’ – some areas become rich inregeneration schemes, others are poor – and the

Partnerships and rural governance

46


process is cumulative and reinforcing. We notedearlier how those partnerships which are in asecond or later round of funding are better placedto win future monies, confirming the fact that thefeasibility of forming and sustaining regenerationpartnerships favours linking with those whoalready have relevant resources, expertise andskills. In contrast to the territorially-comprehensive competencies of the old ruralgovernment, what is emerging is a very unevengeography of rural governance – with some areasbecoming ‘partnership rich’, and others remaining‘partnership poor’. One key challenge in thefuture will be to spread the benefits ofregeneration resources more widely by ensuringthat the partnerships themselves are lessgeographically concentrated.

Empowerment and accountability

This in turn raises considerable questionsconcerning the linkages between the new ruralgovernance and empowerment. Switching to apartnership culture has meant that decisionmaking requires a collective negotiation of policyand strategy. While this can be inclusive andempowering, it can also lead to problems. Trusthas to be earned and given; shared strategy has tobe agreed; defined territorial areas of operationhave to be demarcated; and medium- to long-termpolicies have to be negotiated. Such collectivenegotiation of policy can also lead to the blurringof boundaries and responsibilities for tacklingsocial and economic issues. This can lead toblame avoidance, or to ‘scapegoating’, and therecan be difficulties for the public in identifyingwhich agencies are responsible for policydelivery. This in turn means that lines ofaccountability are also blurred – there is often asignificant ‘accountability deficit’ in the new ruralgovernance, given the lack of directly electedrepresentatives on rural partnerships. Yet basicquestions concerning which communities andwhich interests are being represented, and bywhom, are rarely raised.

Following on from this, most funding agencieswill demand community involvement in order fora partnership to win, or even take part in, thebidding process for competitive funds. Often,however, this can amount to little more than theco-option of key individuals. In fact ‘thecommunity’ representative is often chosen from a‘representative’ organisation – the local authority,the young farmers, the chamber of commerce –

rather than from the community itself. Thesubstance of community involvement is variable,with the local community being more commonlyengaged in the initial identification of needs thanin either project implementation or providingfeedback and monitoring. As such, it could beargued that the much-vaunted ‘communityengagement’ is simply used by many partnershipsas a ‘resource’ which must be enrolled anddemonstrated in order to secure funding, ratherthan as a necessary system of accountability andcapacity building. This in turn raises questions asto who is being ‘empowered’, and for what ends.

Frequently, however, partnerships are not able toappropriately address issues of empowerment andengagement, because they are essentially outputdriven. The emphasis placed on outputs in boththe awarding of funding and the evaluation ofsuccess deflects time and resources from the taskof public consultation and the necessity toconsolidate relationships between partners. Assuch, the structural framework within whichpartnerships operate may serve to hinder theeffective realisation of the benefits of partnershipworking, highlighting a contradiction between theintention and practice of government policy.

Full empowerment would stress the developmentof a rural policy programme designed specificallyto enhance community capacity. An emphasis onpartnership and participation alone assumes alevel of capacity – local knowledge, skills,resources and influence – and an availability ofsupport, which may well be lacking in isolatedand small rural communities. Instead, buildingsuch capacity means: developing programmeswhich improve the skills and confidence ofindividuals; strengthening the capacity of localgroups to develop and manage their own ruralregeneration strategies, rather than relying on theresources of other partners; and investing insustainable community services that contribute toeconomic, social and environmental regeneration.

Training will be required to allow all partners tocontribute effectively to the new rural governance.The ability to work in partnership should not beassumed, especially as the new governanceinvolves a drawing together of different culturesand different ways of working. Trust needs to bebuilt between partners, to overcome anyprejudices which may exist and time is required todevelop good working practices and collaborativeprocedures.

47

Whose regeneration?

Raising questions concerning empowerment andaccountability inevitably brings us on to a finalarea of concern in terms of who actually benefitsfrom rural regeneration partnerships. The firstissue is the contested meaning of regenerationitself. Most partnerships are pursuing economicregeneration, although some prioritise social orcultural issues and others favour environmentalconcerns. All four areas – economic, social,cultural and environmental – need to beaddressed in any comprehensive and integratedregeneration strategy, and this is certainly theapproach which informs both Agenda 21 and thecurrent reform of the EU structural funds in ruralareas. In practice this has been hard to achieve,especially given the continued separation of thekey public sector agencies responsible foragriculture, tourism, environment and economicdevelopment. Since these agencies fund mostregeneration activities, much of this continues toproceed along sectoral lines.

Linked to this are continuing concerns over whobenefits from regeneration activity, and a cleardistinction needs to be drawn betweenregeneration in an area (which often involves nomore than the inward movement of employment,not necessarily filled by local people),regeneration of an area (which will bring otherdevelopments alongside the jobs) andregeneration for an area (which will involve anintegrated strategy contributing to the sustainabledevelopment of social, economic and culturalresources). The three processes will producedifferent results, and only the latter will fullycontribute to community development, yet all areusually bundled together under the catch-all termof ‘regeneration’. We say ‘contribute’ tocommunity development, because perhaps themost vital form of regeneration throughpartnerships is regeneration by an area, whichwould involve the local community as fullpartners in any project rather than as recipients.As our research has shown, such a situation isvery rare at the moment.

Partnerships and rural governance

To begin to raise these issues is to step into thepolicy future. There are no easy solutions to anyof them, and we are aware that each will bedifficult to negotiate in practice. However, byraising them we are seeking to contribute to awider debate – one aimed at ensuring that ruralpartnership working marks the beginning of asignificantly new process of engagement andempowerment in the countryside.

48


Atkinson, R. (1999) ‘Discourses of partnership andempowerment in contemporary British urbanregeneration’, Urban Studies, vol 36, no 1, pp59-72.

Bailey, N. (1994) ‘Towards a research agenda forpublic-private partnership in the 1990s’, LocalEconomy, vol 8, no 4, pp 292-306.

Bailey, N. (1995) Partnership agencies in Britishurban policy, London: UCL Press.

Baine, S. (1994) Building community partnerships:Good practice guidelines for local authoritysupport for community organisations andcommunity buildings, London: CommunityMatters.

Bennett, R. and Krebs, G. (1991) Local economicdevelopment: Public–private partnershipinitiatives in Britain and Germany, London:Pinter.

Bidwell, L. and Downie, A. (1996) Local ruralpartnerships – Issues for those involved incommunity work, Edinburgh: CommunityGovernment Exchange.

Bryant, P., Greenlees, A. and Thomas, S. (1997)Building communities: Community-leddevelopment, Caerphilly: Wales Council forVoluntary Action.

CCW (Countryside Council for Wales) (1995)Towards a common vision – Supportingcommunity participation in the environment,Bangor: CCW.

Ceredigion County Council (1996) Service DeliveryPlan.

Ceredigion County Coucil (1997) EconomicDevelopment Strategy.

Civic Trust (1989) Regeneration – New forms ofcommunity partnership, London: Civic Trust.

Clark, C. (1994) Urban regeneration partnerships: Ananalysis of the knowledge, skills and attitudesneeded by the managers of partnerships, CivicTrust Research Document, London: Civic Trust.

Clark, C. (1998) Making partnerships work: Apractical guide for the community andvoluntary sectors, York: York PublishingServices.

Clark, D.M. (1989) Practical partnership – Districtsworking with rural community councils: A goodpractice guide, London: Association of DistrictCouncils.

Curiad Caron ( 1997) Informaiton sheet.

Day, G. (1998) ‘Working with the grain? Towardssustainable rural and community development’,Journal of Rural Studies, vol 14, no 1, pp 89-106.

DBRW (Development Board for Rural Wales) (1997)Rural Wales – The challenge of change,Newtown: DBRW.

DETR (Department of the Environment, Transportand the Regions) (1998) Community basedregeneration initiatives – A working paper,London: DETR.

DETR (1999) Rural England: A discussion paper,dLondon: DETR.

References and further reading

49

DoE (Department of the Environment) (1997)Effective partnerships: A handbook for membersof ‘Single Regeneration Budget’ Partnerships,London: HMSO.

DoE/MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries andFood) (1995) Rural England: A nationcommitted to a living countryside, English RuralWhite Paper, London: HMSO.

DoE/PIEDA (1995) Involving communities in urbanand rural regeneration: A guide forpractitioners, London: HMSO.

Dyfi Eco-Valley Partnership (1997) Business PlanConsultativeDocument.

ECRD (European Conference on Rural Development)(1996) The Cork Declaration: A livingcountryside, Brussels: AEIDL.

Edwards, B. (1998) ‘Charting the discourse ofcommunity action: perspectives from practicein rural Wales’, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 14,no 1, pp 63-78.

Edwards, B., Goodwin, M., Pemberton, S. andWoods, M. (forthcoming) ‘Partnerships, powerand scale in rural governance’, Environmentand Planning C: Government and Policy.

English Partnerships/Partners in the Countryside(1998) Working with rural communities: Aguide to rural partnerships, Brighton: EnglishPartnerships.

Finn, D. (1994) A new partnership? Training andEnterprise Councils and the voluntary sector,London: London Borough Grants Committee.

Francis, D. and Henderson, P. (1992) Working withrural communities, London: Macmillan.

Geddes, M. (1997) Partnership against poverty andexclusion? Local regeneration strategies andexcluded communities in the UK, Bristol: ThePolicy Press.

Goodwin, M. (1998) ‘The governance of rural areas:some emerging research issues and agendas’,Journal of Rural Studies, vol 14, no 1, pp 5-14.

Greenlees, A. (1998) Building communities: A guidefor local government working with community-led initiatives, Caerphilly: Welsh Council forVoluntary Action.

Hallin, G. and Lundequist, P. (1999) ‘Practices of thepartnership principle’, Paper presented to theRegional Studies Association conference,Bilbao, 18-21 September.

Hastings, A. (1999) ‘Analysing power relations inpartnerships: is there a role for discourseanalysis?’, Urban Studies, vol 36, no 1, pp 91-106.

Hutchinson, J. (1994) ‘The practice of partnership inlocal economic development’, LocalGovernment Studies, vol 20, no 3, pp 335-44.

Hutchinson, J. (1997) ‘Regenerating the counties: thecase of the Single Regeneration BudgetChallenge Fund’, Local Economy, vol 12, no 1,pp 38-54.

Hutchinson, J. and Foley, P. (1994) ‘Partnerships inlocal economic development: the managementissues’, Management Research News, vol 17, no7, pp 50-4.

Kelleher, J. (1998) Evaluation of the Market TownsInitiative – First round of annual monitoringvisits, Draft Report, London: Tavistock Institute.

LEADER European Observatory (1997) Organisinglocal partnerships, Brussels: AEIDL.

LGMB (Local Government Management Board)(1995) Public, private and voluntarypartnerships, Luton: LGMB.

LGMB/NCVO (National Council for VoluntaryOrganisations) (1993) Building effective localpartnerships, Luton: LGMB.

Littlewood, S. and Whitney, D. (1996) ‘Re-formingurban regeneration? The practice and potentialof English Partnerships’, Local Economy, vol 11,no 1, pp 39-49.

Lowndes, V. et al (1997) ‘Networks, partnerships andurban regeneration’, Local Economy, vol 11, no4, pp 333-42.

References and further reading

50


McArthur, A. (1995) ‘The active involvement of localresidents in strategic community partnerships’,Policy & Politics, vol 23, no 1, pp 61-71.

Mackintosh, M. (1992) ‘Partnership: issues of policyand negotiation’, Local Economy, vol 7, no 3,pp 210-24.

Marsden, T. and Murdoch, J. (1998) ‘The shiftingnature of rural governance and communityparticipation’, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 14,no 1, pp 1-4.

Martin, S. and Oztel, H. (1996) ‘The business ofpartnership: collaborative–competitivepartnerships in the development of BusinessLinks’, Local Economy, vol 11, no 2, pp 131-42.

Mid Wales Partnership (1998) A Strategic Frameworkto Develop the Region.

Murdoch, J. and Abram, S. (1998) ‘Defining the limitsof community governance’, Journal of RuralStudies, vol 14, no 1, pp 41-50.

NCVO/LGMB (1993) Building effective localpartnerships, London: NCVO.

Nevin, B. and Shiner, P. (1995) ‘Communityregeneration and empowerment: a newapproach to partnership’, Local Economy, vol 9,no 4, pp 308-22.

Osborne, S.P. (1998) ‘Partnerships in local economicdevelopment: a bridge too far for the voluntarysector?’, Local Economy, vol 12, no 4, pp 290-5.

Oswestry Hills LEADER 11 (1997) Summary BusinessPlan.

Peck, J.A. and Tickell, A. (1994) ‘Too manypartnerships ... the future for regenerationpartnerships’, Local Economy, vol 9, no 3, pp251-65.

Powys County Council (1996) Service Delivery Plan.

Powys County Council (1997) EconomicDevelopment Plan.

Roger Tym and Partners (1998) Mid-term evaluationof the LEADER II Programme for Wales, FinalReport, Machynlleth: Welsh EuropeanProgramme Executive Ltd.

Scottish Office (1995) Rural Scotland: People,prosperity and partnership, Scottish Rural WhitePaper, London: HMSO.

Scottish Office (1996) People, prosperity andpartnership: Progress report, Edinburgh: ScottishOffice.

Shropshire County Council (1997) A CommunityPolicy for Shropshire.

Smith, A. (1998) ‘The politics of economicdevelopment in a French rural area’, in N.Walzer and B.D. Jacobs (eds) Public–privatepartnership for local economic development,London: Praeger.

Stone, C. (1989) Regime politics, Lawrence, KA:Kansas University Press.

Welsh Office (1996) A working countryside for Wales,Welsh Rural White Paper, London: HMSO.

Westholm, E. (1999) ‘Exploring the role of ruralpartnerships’, in E. Westholm, M. Moseley andN. Stenias (eds) Local partnerships and ruraldevelopment in Europe, Dalarna, Sweden/Cheltenham: Dalarna Research Institute/Countryside and Community Research Unit.

Wilson, A. and Charlton, K. (1997) Makingpartnerships work – A practical guide for thepublic, private, voluntary and communitysectors, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Woods, M. (1998) ‘Advocating rurality? Therepositioning of rural local government’,Journal of Rural Studies, vol 14, no 1, pp 13-26.

51

The Mid Wales PartnershipDate of formation: 1996

Territory: WDA Mid Wales region (Ceredigion, Meirionnydd, Powys)

Funding source: Contributions from partners (c £80,000 per annum)

Partners: 17 partners including WDA, county councils, LEADER groups, TECs, voluntary and privatesector representatives

Focus: Strategic policy making and planning

Organisation: Partnership board of senior representatives of all partners; specialist working groups

Staff: One part-time secretary

Notes: Established to provide a strategic framework to promote and develop coherent and inclusivepolicies in response to issues of common concern and interest across the Mid Wales region.Replaced the Mid Wales Development Forum. Recognised as the Economic Forum for MidWales by the National Assembly for Wales

Appendix A: Case studypartnerships

A

52


Empowering Enterprise in Local CommunitiesDate of formation: 1996 (for seven years)

Territory: Marches Objective 5b area in Herefordshire and Shropshire; targeted on 15 communities

Funding source: SRB, additional funds from European Regional Development Fund and from local authorities

Partners: Shropshire County Council, Herefordshire County Council, HAWTEC, Shropshire CommunityCouncil, Herefordshire Community Council

Focus: Community economic development

Aim: To support community economic enterprises to support community development, via SRBChallenge Funds

Organisation: Two steering committees operating in Shropshire and Herefordshire respectively

Staff: Four part-time staff

Notes: Economic enterprise is the main focus of the programme but voluntary, community, sporting,cultural and environmental enterprises can be eligible for grants. However, individualbusinesses are not eligible. Grants of up to £5,000 can be allocated, but 50% match-fundingis required. Examples of projects funded include community shops, childcare provision,community buses, cooperatives and crime prevention schemes

JigsoDate of formation: 1987; re-structured 1995

Territory: Rural Wales

Funding source: EU Objective 5b programme, supplemented by the Countryside Council for Wales, Camelot,and the WDA

Partners: 13 partners from public, private and voluntary sectors

Focus: Community development

Aim: To facilitate community participation through the provision of training and the subsequentawarding of grants

Organisation: Managed under contract by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action; management committeeof partner representatives, excluding Camelot and Manweb (funding only)

Staff: Two full-time staff

Notes: The present work programme involves the promotion of the benefits of communityparticipation to organisations; the coordination, development and delivery of training inparticipatory approaches to intermediary bodies; and the encouragement of good practicein participatory approaches to community development, advising intermediary bodies andcommunity groups on sources of funding

53

Oswestry Hills LEADER II Local Development GroupDate of formation: 1996

Territory: Nine parishes around Oswestry, north west Shropshire

Funding source: EU LEADER II programme, matched funding from RDC, Oswestry Borough Council, ShropshireCounty Council and the Community Council for Shropshire

Partners: Partners drawn from across the public, private and voluntary sectors

Focus: Community and economic development

Aim: “To create opportunities for people living and working in the Oswestry Hills LEADER area todevelop sustainable communities by: strengthening economic, social and environmentalresources; promoting local people’s use of these resources to rejuvenate the local ruraleconomy.”

Organisation: Local development group of 24 members

Staff: One full-time project worker and two part-time administrative/managerial employees

Notes: The Local Development Group can allocate up to £5,000 of readily accessible funding tosupport local community events and projects, while larger projects requiring greater fundingare passed to a Marches-wide LEADER II Regional Sub-committee with recommendations. ACommunity Action Grant Scheme administered by the borough council has also enablelocal groups to directly access LEADER II grants of up to £1,000 matched by up to £1,000from the council. Programmes have focused on rural innovation, the acquisition of skills,and transnational cooperation

Menter Powys LEADER II Local Action GroupDate of formation: 1992 (for LEADER I; under LEADER II 1995-99)

Territory: Powys, excluding Ystradgynlais area

Funding source: EU LEADER II programme, matched funding from Powys County Council, DBRW/WDA, andMid Wales TEC

Partners: 11 partners including county council, WDA, TEC, Brecon Beacons National Park, farmingunions and voluntary sector partners


Aim: “To pilot innovative projects aimed at the regeneration of the rural economy.”

Organisation: Management committee comprised of funding partners; officers’ group includes otherpartners and interested parties

Staff: Over 20 full-time staff

Notes: Originally funded under LEADER I and continued under LEADER II. Hosted by Powys CountyCouncil. Priorities under LEADER II have included helping communities to take action at alocal level, piloting the use of new technology in order to promote rural tourism, small firmdevelopment and craft enterprises, and protecting and enhancing rural services

Appendix A: Case study partnerships

54


The Market Town Initiative

The Market Town Initiative was launched in 1996 by the then DBRW and is now administered by theWDA. It is a competitive partnership programme aimed at stimulating and supporting communitydevelopment in small towns in rural Wales. Grants of £90,000 of revenue funding over three years wereawarded to 10 groups in two rounds of awards. In this project we have focused on the fundedpartnerships in Hay-on-Wye, Penrhyndeudraeth, and Tregaron, details of each of which are given below.Groups are also funded in Abercraf, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Cardigan, Dolgellau, Llanfair Caereinion,Llanidloes, and Rhayader.

United HayDate of formation: 1997 (for three years)

Territory: Hay-on-Wye and neighbouring communities

Funding source: WDA Market Town Initiative

Partners: Partners include the WDA, Hay Town Council, Menter Powys, the Brecon Beacons NationalPark, Dial-a-Ride, and local societies


Aim: To develop a year round economy through the provision of recreational facilities for all, therestoration of the natural and built environment, and to build consensus within thecommunity

Organisation: Committee elected at public meetings, all members are ‘independent’ rather than delegatesof organisations

Staff: One full-time development officer

Notes: Established in order to bid for MTI funding. Major activity has focused on identifying a sitefor a community centre, streetscape improvements and creating a riverside walk

Deudraeth 2000Date of formation: 1997 (for three years)

Territory: Penrhyndeudraeth, Gwynedd


Partners: Partners include the WDA, Penrhyndeudraeth Town Council, and local societies


Organisation: Committee elected at public meetings

Staff: No staff employed

Notes: Deudraeth 2000 opted to draw on the expertise of its committee members rather than toemploy a development money. It has instead spent funds on high quality independentreports on traffic reduction and town enhancement schemes

55

Curiad Caron Market Town InitiativeDate of formation: 1994. Formally constituted in 1997 as part of the Market Town Initiative

Territory: Former Tregaron Rural District, Ceredigion


Partners: Two – Curiad Caron and the WDA: Curiad Caron is a non-profit making company withrepresentation from 10 local organisations


Aim: To enhance the economic vitality of the area through helping the community to realise itsfull potential. It aims to achieve this in harmony with an affirmation of the traditional andcultural values and linguistic integrity of the communities within which it operates

Organisation: 15 member board of volunteer directed. 10 represent local organisations; five are elected torepresent surrounding communities

Staff: One full-time development officer

Notes: Membership of Curiad Caron is open to anyone living in the Tregaron School catchmentarea who subscribes to its aims. Projects have included publishing a diary of events, ahistory booklet and a book of walks; resurrecting the Ffair Garon; helping to establish ayouth group; compiling a guide to game fishing; and assisting in school sports pavilion andmemorial hall projects

Appendix A: Case study partnerships

56


A postal questionnaire survey was sent to 50 partnerships operating in the study region. Thirty-eightorganisations returned questionnaires, but six of these were subsequently excluded from analysis as theydid not conform to the project’s working definition of a partnership organisation. The key characteristicsof the 33 remaining partnerships are detailed in the table below.

Focus

Facilitative partnerships 8

Delivery partnerships 25

Scale and territory

Regional or above 8

Wales 7

England 1

County 11

Ceredigion 4

Powys 4

Shropshire 3

Sub-county 12

Ceredigion 2

Gwynedd 1

Powys 6

Shropshire 2

Inter-county (Ceredigion/Powys/Gwynedd) 1

Cross-border (England/Wales) 1

Programme membership

EU LEADER programme 2

Other EU programme 2

DBRW Market Town Initiative 8

Appendix B: Characteristics ofpartnerships responding to thequestionnaire survey

B

partnership working in rural regeneration · 2015. 7. 13. · working in partnership those involved...

Documents