Rationalising partner governance

Challenges and opportunities

One of the clearest opportunities was the chance to work collaboratively on countywide issues, rather than each organisation working in isolation.

Historically, discussions about vulnerable children, for example, tended to happen separately within each local authority – Bedford Borough referring to “our children”, and Luton and Central Bedfordshire doing the same. In practice, many of the issues affecting children and families don’t respect organisational boundaries, and the ambition was to start finding countywide solutions to shared problems, rather than three parallel ones.

Alongside this sat a strong resilience and efficiency case. Bedfordshire’s constituent authorities are relatively small, facing significant funding and resourcing pressures, and there was a clear opportunity to do more together – from co-commissioning services to sharing capacity – rather than duplicating effort.

The work was also prompted by some real, practical challenges with the existing arrangements. Countywide meetings often included representatives who could listen and contribute, but who lacked the authority to make decisions or commit funding on their organisation’s behalf. This meant that even where partners wanted to move quickly, business would need to go back to individual organisations for sign-off before returning to a group that might only meet quarterly – meaning months could pass with little visible progress.

Initiatives and actions taken

The PCC took the decision to commission an independent review and engaged CfGS to carry it out in partnership. This gave the PCC the opportunity to hold one-to-one conversations with strategic leaders across the county, setting out a clear and low risk offer: the PCC would lead and fund the work, and simply wanted partners’ support and engagement.

An early full stakeholder meeting brought together strategic leaders from across the county’s partner organisations – for many, the first time they had been in the same (virtual) room together in a long while.

CfGS then undertook a detailed partnership governance mapping exercise, reviewing a substantial number of governance documents to build a clear picture of the current landscape, followed by a series of interviews and journey mapping workshops. These activities deliberately brought in operational, as well as strategic, voices – helping to surface where processes were duplicated, frustrating, or simply not working well in practice, alongside the one-to-one interviews carried out with strategic leaders.

Outcomes and impact

The headline outcome has been the creation of a new Safer Beds Strategic Partnership Board, with its first meeting planned for mid-October 2026. The PCC has been clear that the fuller picture of impact will only really become visible once that first meeting has taken place – something this case study may be revisited to reflect in due course.

A line here that this is not another meeting (that would be ironic) but one that is to replace an existing one (Serious Harm Board) expanding its scope at the highest strategic level.

Some positive effects have already emerged. At least one partner organisation has begun reviewing its own internal meeting structures as a direct result of taking part in the project. The process has also strengthened working relationships across the partnership, introducing people who need to work together but who hadn’t necessarily done so before.

Buy-in from strategic leaders was strong in principle from the outset. One honest reflection, though, is that this commitment wasn’t always cascaded as clearly as it could have been within partner organisations in the early stages – meaning some of those attending on their organisation’s behalf weren’t always clear on the purpose of the work or what was being asked of them. This became less of an issue as the project progressed.

Top tips

• Be bold and be prepared to be ambitious rather than starting too small. Even if you don’t reach every goal you set out with, you’re likely to make real progress along the way – starting small risks staying small.
• Involve strategic partners in shaping the terms of reference from the very start, rather than setting these independently. A shared hand in defining the work builds a stronger sense of ownership and belonging across the partnership.
• Be really clear, from day one, about what you’re trying to achieve – and keep reinforcing that message throughout the life of the project.

Lessons learned

Trust the process, and the timeline, that an experienced delivery partner sets out – even where it doesn’t immediately match your own expectations of pace. The way there may look a little different to how you first imagined it, but a mature, well-run partner will get you to where you need to be and will make sure everybody is properly brought along.

Share the work with your own wider team, not just at senior or strategic level. Colleagues across the organisation often have their own relationships with partner organisations and can play a real role in helping build support for the work.

Genuine buy-in takes ongoing effort to sustain, not just a one-off agreement at the outset. Partners need a reason to feel genuinely part of a shared endeavour throughout – not simply signed up to something being driven by one organisation on their behalf.

Future directions

With the primary goal of establishing an overarching strategic board now achieved, attention is turning to what sits beneath it – continuing to reduce duplication across the county’s meeting structures and encouraging individual partner organisations to mirror that same thinking within their own internal governance.

Looking further ahead, The PCC sees this work as a potential blueprint that could help inform its response to wider national reform of policing and local government, the shape of which remains uncertain at the time of writing. Whatever form that reform ultimately takes, The PCC believes the strategic relationships and shared ways of working built through this project – and the model of independent, collaborative review that underpinned it – will stand it in good stead.