A message from Nick Brown OBE, chair of Oldham Partnership executive

Members of the Oldham Partnership will be aware that both our blueprint for Oldham (our sustainable community strategy and local area agreement) and our commissioning of multi-agency services have received widespread recognition for their effectiveness. Indeed, the partnership currently commissions around 120 services delivered by over 60 different organisations. This work complements and supports the role of individual agencies as well as the broader voluntary, community and faith sector.

Our partnership achievements in terms of further and higher education attainment, improving skill levels for residents, supporting people into employment, rapidly responding to the credit crunch, providing support for vulnerable individuals to stay in their homes, reducing teenage pregnancies, reducing crime and anti-social behaviour and much more has been a real success story. In 2009 the European Institute of Public Administration awarded the Oldham Partnership the European Public Sector Award. This recognised both the strength of our strategic planning, resource pooling and effective commissioned services.

The impact of the credit crunch combined with a predicted reduction in public funding from 2011 has stimulated the partnership to both reassess its strategic vision and to explore new ways of working. This is expressed in two forms. First, the Oldham Partnership has produced a prospectus (www.oldhampartnership.org.uk/oldham-prospectus) which recognises three priority areas (towards a university town, great places to live and healthy lives) where the partnership will focus its resources to make major improvements to the borough. Significantly, these major changes are already underway with a regional science centre planned to open in late 2010, district partnerships actively working with communities to improve their localities, and further activities to improve the health of our residents are being planned and implemented.

Second, we accept that 2011 will be a year of change. Accordingly, we have initiated a review of our area based grant programme of activity. This is a sensible step to ensure that the Oldham Partnership is funding programmes of activity which deliver the maximum amount of impact against our strategic objectives and also clear value for money. The review is being undertaken over the summer of 2010 and will be reported back to the Oldham Partnership executive in autumn.

In the meantime, information on the review will be posted on this website and regular updates provided at both partnership meetings and the partnership conference on 16 July. Alternatively, contact the Oldham Partnership support team on 0161 770 3199 or alison.vaughan@oldham.gov.uk.

Sustainable community strategy and local area agreement