Hot Topic: Collaborative working
Recent policy from the Scottish Government (for example the McLelland Review of Public Procurement (2006)) has placed an emphasis on collaborative working and purchasing which sees public agencies coming together to buy goods and services in order to achieve cost savings and efficiencies. More recently, voluntary organisations themselves have started to consider options for coming together, either to purchase or sell, sometimes coming under considerable pressure from public authorities to do so. This is known by various terms, and in various forms, such as organisations forming mergers, partnerships, federations, clusters or consortia.
This Hot Topics page is designed to offer information and resources on this area of collaborative working, particularly for organisations which are considering these options, or simply want to find out more.
Guide to the terms involved
Cluster - Groups of voluntary sector organisations (often within a locality) could achieve economies of scale in back-office services by clustering together. These organisations would usually complement each other in terms of services offered.
Consortium – Voluntary sector organisations could agree to work together and form a consortium to bid for specific contracts.
Federation – While retaining a degree of independence, voluntary sector organisations could begin to work closely together gaining competitive advantage and scale through the sharing of key services, whilst retaining individual identity and autonomy.
Merger – Voluntary sector organisations could pursue a strategy of merging with related organisations to achieve sufficient scale to compete in the market.
Partnership – A less formal approach than the above, where voluntary sector organisations develop strategic alliances and partnerships to gain critical mass when delivering services.
Events (past and present)
In March 2010, CCPS held a session for members which covered some of the issues involved in considering, or creating, consortia. A presentation was given by Roddy Stewart, business adviser at CEIS, which provided an introduction to the issues around collaboration, consortia and mergers; his presentation is available on the events' archive section of the CCPS website (although only CCPS members can view this page & need to be logged in). However, the main advice he gave was that organisations who are best placed to consider any form of collaborative working, should be organisations who can;
- identify a tangible opportunity
- perceive a mutual benefit
- provide complementary services
- have broadly similar values
- and who are open to working with others
On 3rd and 4th September 2010, there will be one day training events on "Collaborative Working - The legal considerations". These one day events, hosted by the Voluntary Sector Social Services Workforce Unit, CCPS, Housing Support Enabling Unit and GSCPF, will provide a unique focus on the legal considerations of forms of collaborative working. For more information about the event programme, and details of how to book, please click on the link on the top right hand side of this page.
Shared Services within Local Authorities
Shared services have been cited as a potential route to cost savings and performance improvements for councils, and as such are being explored by almost every council in the UK.
In Scotland, several local authorities are involved in Shared Services - please see list below - and more information about the work they are doing can be found on The Improvement Service (IS) website.