North West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership

Collaborative Service Provision - Shining Examples Needed

Chief Executives have asked the North East Centre of Excellence  to undertake a project which seeks to "evidence the case for shared services".

This project will seek to provide evidence, if it can be found, to demonstrate that collaborative service provision can improve the quality of services and support more cost effective service provision. The evidence gathered will be shared within the region to inform and stimulate the debate on what a vision for collaborative service provision in the North East should be. In high-level terms the project will consist of a series of comparisons of the service costs, processes and performance levels between local authorities and the wider public sector.  The scope of the project will incorporate all service areas not just those under the "Corporate and Transactional" services remit. The aim is to highlight the potential for improvement rather than to "spotlight" LAs in any kind of league table, therefore the intention is to anonymise the outputs from this project.
 
To ensure that all examples of collaborative service provision are captured as well as those from further a field, NECE is asking LAs to provide information of existing operational partnerships involving Local Government - these can be either public-public or public-private.  The first step is to identify existing collaborative service provision arrangements so the following information is requested:

• Name of Partnership
• Short Description of partnership service provision
• Year Commenced
• Contact Details (name, email address, tel no)
• alternatively if this information is available publicly - please feel free to send a weblink.

Once an initial list has been established, contact will be made to seek further information about the partnership.

In return for your support, your LA will be credited with contributing to the report and you will receive a copy of the final report.

Please send the information to Julie Brown, Programme Manager, julietbrown@gateshead.gov.uk with the information by 25th May 2007. 

Any queries should be directed to Julie Brown at the email address above.