In 2006 the WLGA formed four Regional Boards whose membership includes the Leaders and Chief Executives in four regions of Wales. The role of the boards includes initiating, promoting and evaluating collaborative activity within their region. The Boards are supported by Regional Coordinators employed by the WLGA. This is widely recognised as a successful innovation in ensuring that there is leadership of those collaborations already in place and those being further developed. The four Regional Boards are:
- North Wales Regional Partnership Board
- Central Wales Regional Partnership Board
- Regional Partnership Forum for South West Wales
- Connecting South East Wales
The regional Boards have provided a place for elected politicians to initiate, promote and evaluate the partnerships that are necessary; the Regional Coordinators also work together to ensure that ideas about innovation and best practice flow across the boundaries and bring about further collaborations.
In October 2008, the WLGA published 'Working Together - Case Studies in Welsh Local Government' which contains around fifty collaboration case studies; a copy of this publication can be accessed by clicking here. This document provides a number of illustrations of the manner in which Welsh local authorities have established firm foundations for developing collaborative networks across local authority boundaries. This document is not a catalogue of all the collaborations that exist, but it does set out a selection of case studies to provide confidence that working together is neither novel nor untested.
- To share information on what works well and, where appropriate, reform processes in the light of what works best;
- To develop and agree regional plans where the decisions of one local authority have an impact on another;
- To share the procurement of goods and services - jointly developing and managing markets and supply chains in the knowledge that they transcend administrative boundaries;
- To deliver services jointly where there are economies of scale to be obtained for transactional processes, greater resilience from larger working groups and quality gains to be achieved from greater specialisation.
Because the purpose of collaboration will vary, then there will need to be innovation and diversity in the organisation, management and accountability of the collaboration process. There is no standard blueprint for the organisation of collaborative activity; it will adapt to the nature and purpose of the collaboration. Nevertheless there is substantial scope for shared learning as different forms of shared organisation are tested in different services and in different areas.