The Lancashire Partnership is Lancashire’s Local Strategic Partnership and works to improve the provision of services and opportunities for Lancashire residents. 

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The Lancashire Partnership Board gives overarching guidance to the Partnership by providing direction, accountability and leadership.   The Board is a “partnership of partnerships” and includes chairs of District Local Partnerships and chairs of thematic groups. The Board representatives include county and district councillors as well as chairs and chief officers from county-wide organisations. The Board considers and authorises recommendations that the Executive makes to it. The Board sets and agrees the Partnership’s vision and priorities that are expressed in Ambition Lancashire and the Lancashire Local Area Agreement.

For more information about the board click here.

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The Executive includes senior officers from the organisations that make up the Lancashire Partnership.   The Executive works to deliver the priorities agreed in Ambition Lancashire and to make sure that the Partnership achieves the targets agreed in the Lancashire Local Area Agreement.   The Executive undertakes a managerial role. It manages performance, commits delivery organisations to agreed action and considers proposals made by partners before making recommendations to the Board.

For an overview of how the Executive and the Board fit with the rest of the Partnership click here

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‘Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) provide the forum for collectively reviewing and steering public resources through identifying priorities in Sustainable Community Strategies and LAAs. But (as non-statutory bodies) they are not the ultimate decision-makers on such plans. All target-setting, and consequent financial, commissioning, or contractual commitments proposed by LSPs, must be formalised through the relevant local authority, or through one of the other LSP partners (for example, if policing, or health resources are involved).’

(Creating Strong, Safe and Prosperous Communities Statutory Guidance 2008)

Representatives on LSPs are accountable to their own organisation and need to secure the approval of their own organisations to implement and ratify actions agreed at the LSP.   LSPs therefore use the normal procedures of partner organisations to implement decisions, they do not supersede them.

LSPs provide an opportunity for partners to increase the impact of their own decisions by identifying shared priorities and influencing other partners to co-operate towards their shared goals. 

Partners work together on a voluntary basis, jointly delivering actions only when there is joint agreement between them. 

Proposals are committed to by partners at the LSP Board, decisions are then ratified and implemented through organisations normal decision making processes. Prior discussion at the partnership and within organisations enables final proposals to be agreed and ratified and implemented by the relevant organisations.

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Membership on the Board is given to Chairs of all the thematic partnerships;

• Children’s Trust
• Environment Forum
• People and Communities Group
• Economic Development
• Health and Wellbeing Partnership
• Safer Lancashire Board
• Older People’s Partnership

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There are VCFS places allocated on the Board and Executive.

Each theme group also has a Voluntary, Community & Faith Sector Representative who helps to share information with those from the wider sector, seeking their views and processing feedback.

VCF representation within the Partnership framework is organised through the sector’s consortium “Third Sector Lancashire”

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The Partnership Executive Chair is Frank Hayden Operations Director at BAE systems.  Business Link North West is represented at the Executive. The Board has places for 3 representatives of the Lancashire Economic Partnership’s Board who are representatives from private sector organisations.

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As the current Partnership framework and the LAA were developed, where possible, existing and statutorily required partnerships were incorporated into it, for example, the Children and Young People’s Partnership and Safer Lancashire Board, the Environment Forum. Others were developed from the groups formed to deliver the first LAA and a new thematic group was formed, People and Communities, to strengthen this area in the delivery of Ambition Lancashire and the Local Area Agreement. Follow the link for a summary of what the Partnership theme groups lead on.

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Parish councils are represented through their district LSPs.

The number of parishes in each district varies and the way in which parish councils are represented at the district LSP is also different in each one.

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During 2004 extensive consultations were carried out across Lancashire, and the first sustainable community strategy Ambition Lancashire was produced in 2005, please follow the link for more details on this process.

In 2007/8 Ambition Lancashire was revised to reflect current priorities and to respond to changing circumstances. Consultation on the revision included, writing to partners, including councillors, for their comments on both the first version of Ambition Lancashire and on the first draft of revised version; discussions within Lancashire Partnership meetings and at district Local Strategic Partnership meetings and a Lancashire Partnership Conference.

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Throughout 2007/08 various consultation events were held across Lancashire that were informed by the work with partners to revise Ambition Lancashire. At these events partners were encouraged to outline their priorities and to propose indicators to be included in the LAA.

These consultation responses informed the development and production of the LAA.

The detailed negotiation of the LAA indicators and targets took place between the Lancashire Partnership and Government Office North West. The negotiation group was made up of representatives from a number of partner organisations who reported back to the Executive and the Board as well as to thematic groups and their own organisations.

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Representatives on LSPs are accountable to their own organisation and need the commitment of their organisational to implement and ratify LSP decisions.  LSPs therefore use the normal procedures of partner organisations to implement decisions, they do not supersede them.   Partners’ direct accountability to the public is undiminished by their partnership status. Partners are also accountable to each other. The Executive and Board both provide a specific challenge and support function and this can also take place in the Performance and Theme groups. Council’s Overview & Scrutiny committees that are made up of elected councillors can also scrutinise and review the work of the Partnership.

Through the Local Area Agreement, LAA, and Comprehensive Area Agreement, CAA, (overseen by Government Office North West and the Audit Commission) there will be an expectation that organisations work together. However individual actions and delivery that results from partners working towards the LAA will, at the point of delivery, continue to be the responsibility of those individual organisations that are carrying them out. The LAA targets do require input and activity from more than one partner in order to achieve them. However it is possible to identify actions that are expected of individual organisations in order to achieve the overall target. Therefore the individual organisations will be responsible for those actions.

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Within the Lancashire Partnership Board, nearly half the partnership representatives are district or county councillors (several in their capacity as chair of the district LSP). The Partnership makes recommendations to councils and other partners, and councils use their own decision making process to ratify the recommendations, including full council and cabinet. As well as considering Partnership issues at Overview and Scrutiny committees. (see answers 12 and 14) 

Through LSPs councillors have an opportunity to influence and direct the decisions taken by other organisations that are members of the partnership. LSPs and other partnerships provide an opportunity for elected members to influence organisations that might not have councillors in their own decision-making structures. 

The Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) describes the councillor’s role with partners as being less about directly commanding and more about influencing using their democratic authority and community leadership role see link below.

Community Leadership and working with Partners

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County Councillors were involved in the development of both the LAA and Ambition Lancashire.

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The unitary authorities of Blackpool and Backburn with Darwen have observer status on the Board and Executive. If the Board decides that a future agenda item is of shared pan-Lancashire interest they have the option to give the unitary authorities full voting rights. Each unitary would be given one vote each and their voting rights would be restricted to the item identified by the Board. The unitaries are included in all Partnership communications and are invited to participate in relevant task groups and other activities and events.

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All District councils are represented on the Executive.   They have 6 seats at the Executive meetings and work a buddy system, which involves council pairings. Some council pairings alternate their attendance while other pairs are always represented by the same council.

This system was agreed so that the Executive meetings were kept to a manageable size but attendance can be extended to all councils when agreed by Executive members.

The Board includes representatives from the district LSPs which can be chaired by the Leaders of the district councils. Even if the district’s leader is not on the Board the district council will be able to influence their LSP representative through their key role in the district LSPs. District councils are also represented within the theme groups. Theme group’s views will be reflected through the theme group Chairs attending the Board.

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Buddy System

All district councils are members of The Partnership Executive, however to manage meeting sizes there is agreement that only 6 districts will be represented at each meeting, with the option for this to be increased for “special meetings“ of the Executive. Districts have paired up as below and the district decide between them who takes the Executive seat at each meeting and how they represent and feed back to each other, for example alternating their seat on the Executive every 6 months or attending alternate meetings.

District Pairings

The Partnership relies on the time and commitment of participants from all the organisations involved.

Lancashire County Council provides staff to support the operational side of the Partnership. LCC’s role includes organising meeting and events, acting as the accountable body for Partnership funding, working together with partners to plan work, develop Ambition Lancashire, and the Lancashire Local Area Agreement. 

LCC Partnership officers support the preparation of reports and agenda items, they offer guidance on format and agenda relevance but do not vet or approve submissions on behalf of the Partnership.

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Organisations represented on the Partnership undertake their own consultations gather and share information from their stakeholder groups e.g. Lancashire County Council’s Living in Lancashire panel.

Councillors direct and indirect involvement, allows communities and residents views to be heard.

There are VCFS places allocated to the Board and Executive. Each theme group has a Voluntary, Community & Faith Sector Representative who helps to share information with those from the wider sector, seeking their views and processing feedback

The People and Community theme group is currently looking at community engagement and 'duty to involve'.

The Partnership is using the Place Survey to inform its actions. The Place Survey is a new postal survey that all county, district and metropolitan councils, and all London boroughs are required to complete. The survey was run jointly between the Lancashire Partnership, Lancashire County Council and the twelve district councils in the county. The survey fieldwork was between October 2008 and January 2009, and 16,604 people gave their views on areas such as local quality of life, community safety and satisfaction with local services. More than one in three people contacted replied to the survey (36%). To view the full report please click here.

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