ABSTRACT
While public private partnerships have been in existence for some time (particularly
contractually based partnerships), the full range and variety of PPPs has only really
started to take shape in the last few years. It might therefore be regarded as
presumptuous to try and identify what makes a successful partnership – indeed what
is success in this context? The 2002 Survey of Local Strategic Partnerships did not
attempt to identify success as such but identified issues which still needed to be
resolved (the most important of which was ‘developing wider and successful
community engagement’ – page 30), but the New Local Government Network’s 2001
Report on Strategic Delivery Partnerships (which were, in effect, in the vanguard of the
PPP movement) stated that ‘the initial assessment is positive … Most of the cases
studied had delivered significant service improvements’ (page 8). It is therefore clear
that some partnerships appear to have stronger foundations than others and that
some parts of the country are embracing the partnership culture more enthusiastically
than others; furthermore there do seem to be some features common to all the more
successful partnerships of whatever category. Not all the partnerships display all of
these features.
