Working in partnership with others isn’t a nice to have – it’s the foundation for everything we want to achieve in the public sector.  

We all want better health outcomes for people, to prevent crises or illness, and to support people to live well in their communities.  

None of this can be achieved alone. 

Involvement, collaboration and integration are key elements of the Well-being of Future Generations Act and the foundation for everything we want to achieve in the public sector. 

But, our network of 209 Welsh partnership bodies is an over- complex web – that’s one partnership for every 14,300 people. 

The Future Generations Report 2025 found current partnership structures “too complicated”, and many national reviews over the last decade have highlighted the same issues: 

• – Too many partnership groups with overlapping aims are leading to duplication of work in already stretched organisations 

• – Confusing and inconsistent accountability arrangements 

• – Short-term, siloed funding that prevents long-term investment and action 

• – A lack of shared evidence and strategic alignment 

• – Leaders stretched across endless meetings with limited impact 

We have to decipher our own partnership structures to effectively shift the system towards prevention, and take collective action to improve people’s health, protect our environment and secure a better future. 

So what can we do to improve Wales’ health outcomes?  

The NHS Directors of Planning Peer Group has given consideration to this challenge. It commissioned a report exploring the partnership landscape, the results of which are aligned with the commissioner’s recommendations for simplification, shared purpose, and stronger collaboration.  

Democratic accountability, statutory responsibilities, diverse geographic footprints and different appetites for shared working mean there is no simple solution. This is why the report makes the following recommendations: 

1.Simplify partnership structures 

• Reduce duplication and align around a clear national‑to‑local framework. 

2. Adopt Joint Strategic Needs Assessments 

• Create a unified evidence base for decision‑making. 

3. Review population requirements 

• Allow partnerships to respond flexibly to local needs, not just nationally prescribed groups. 

4. Align planning requirements 

• Bring statutory plans together within a single regional framework.

1.Simplify partnership structures 

There is no one size fits all model for partnerships, but the most successful ones are forged from collective action and a culture of collaboration, rather than imposition, hierarchy or geographical boundaries.  

We’ve developed a national-to-local framework that outlines clear roles and accountability lines at all levels and would support partnerships to hold both long-term planning and short-term pressures in balance. 

 2. Create a unified evidence base and adopt Joint Strategic Needs Assessments 

Currently, organisations working to solve the same issues, like reducing obesity or providing adequate services for our ageing population, start with different evidence bases and measure progress differently, leading to fragmented data and analysis. 

If you ask a Health Board, Local Authority, or voluntary sector organisation what the population is in their area, you will probably get three or more different answers.  

There are currently too many separate assessments not brought together, including well-being assessments by Public Services Boards, population needs assessments by Regional Partnership Boards, equality assessments by public bodies and area statements by Natural Resources Wales.  

To make it easier to prioritise prevention and target those most in need, we need to create a unified Joint Strategic Needs Assessment that provides a single, shared understanding of population need.  

In Gwent, their Joint Strategic Assessment has provided a common evidence base across the region, and they have used this to inform action, alongside co-production with communities to improve vaccination uptake through the Big Gwent Vaccination Conversation. 

3. Review population requirements 

Partnership action needs to be better tailored to communities’ local needs as current policies are too prescriptive about the groups and people they focus on.  

To achieve consistent improvement in communities’ health, we must better understand their specific needs and challenges.  

We need any new system to be more flexible and use local Joint Strategic Needs Assessment alongside better co-production and involvement to find where the specific need is for each area. 

4. Align planning requirements 

As public services, we love to produce plans, many are statutory but often they are not integrated and are developed to different frameworks, timescales and requirements despite having the same purpose: improving the well-being of their population.  

We need to bring statutory plans together through better planning and a single unified framework – using the Well-being of Future Generations Act.  

Action across organisations would then be aligned, partners would work together more effectively and our action on integrated issues (poverty, climate change, employment) would be more impactful. 

The Wigan Deal, a citizen led approach to health and care, showed us how multiple public bodies can work with communities to align around a common Deal that manages demand for services and saves money while also transforming how people understand their roles in creating successful, healthy communities that improve healthy life expectancy.  

Most successful partnerships are forged from collective action rather than imposition. Consideration should not be given to simplification alone, redrawing and reducing groups is not an automatic route to improved delivery.  

The most consistent finding of this review of Strategic Partnerships was that a culture of collaboration and collegiate working developed locally was viewed as more important and powerful than rearranging boundaries, and the Well-being of Future Generations Act can provide that common catalyst. 

Making change in the partnership landscape is not easy. But to achieve the transformative change Wales needs to improve our health and well-being, we must act as one system.  

Collaboration is not an ambition for the future; it is the foundation of how we must work today for a better tomorrow.