ABSTRACT
‘Partnership: suppressing hatred in search of money’ – the opening gambit of the comedian, journalist and social entrepreneur, Simon Fanshawe, in his speech at the 2003 conference dinner of the Local Government Information Unit. At the time he was chair of the Brighton and Hove Strategic Partnership, and to this day he chairs their Economic Partnership. Working in partnerships is an almost inevitable response to an economic downturn and consequent cuts in public expenditure. But are partnerships a panacea for achieving ‘more for less’ from the public purse, or do they herald a false dawn where organisational synergies are confounded by legitimately differing priorities or hostile self-serving manoeuvrings?
