Can partnerships be the answer to delivering public waste services?

The National Association of Waste Disposal Officers (NAWDO) organised a meeting to discuss partnership working.

Over twenty local authorities attended alongside Defra and DCLG. The meeting was facilitated by Local Partnerships’ John Enright.
Morning presentations identified barriers to working together and covered a range of issues, from sovereignty to culture – should services be kept in-house or could they be outsourced? Another hot topic was the issue around whether the savings envisaged through joint working were realistic and deliverable? These points were discussed in a highly participative and lively debate.

John Enright Led a discussion asking: what are the benefits for Waste Disposal Authorities? Why bother with partnerships? John highlighted the work Local Partnerships has done to assist partnership working and the case studies published on our public portal covering the Kent Resource Partnership, the Hertfordshire Waste Partnership and a number of other successful partnership across the country.
The afternoon workshops focused on how authorities across the country had tackled these issues and been able to deliver major savings while protecting frontline public services. It emerged that trust, flexibility and defining realistic outcomes were the key principles to collaborative working.

As the event drew to a close there was general agreement that when considering all the options on how authorities could deliver public services, working with neighbours had to be one of them. The group was asked if they wished NAWDO to set up a regular meeting on partnership and if so, what its focus would be, who should attend and the frequency of such meetings? NAWDO is collating responses and will let its members know the views of the authorities shortly.

In the meantime, Local Partnerships continues to help LAs and other public sector bodies to deliver cost savings, with a strong focus on supporting authorities to deliver high quality services to residents and businesses. If you would like to discuss how we can assist you in developing partnerships in the waste sector, please contact John Enright directly john.enright@localpartnerships.gov.uk or 07824 371 720