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What works in regional governance

Understand the importance of transparency, honesty, mutual respect and open communication between parties to the Memorandum of Understanding.

Regional governance needs strong cross-regional collaboration. It is important to encourage good working relationships between the high performing and lower performing local authorities. Supportive relationships between authorities will strengthen the operation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) across the region.

Make sure there is transparency, honesty and mutual respect among all parties to the MoU and open communication, particularly when dealing with difficulties. It is helpful to have cross-network engagement from a team with dedicated capacity to lead/support the regional activity.

Look for evidence of impact, such as: 

  • quality 
  • cost avoidance 
  • compliance 
  • stories 
  • improved workforce stability 
  • reduced turnover 
  • conversion of agency to permanent workforce 

 Consider if any of the following might be useful to your region: 

  • a legal review of the MOU to provide confidence and assurance to human resources and elected members 
  • a single point of contact for the Managed Service Provider (MSP) and agency engagement about escalation and market control, to provide direct engagement with MSPs and agencies and communicate actions to regional partners transparently 
  • a commitment to establishing and embedding a culture of high support/high challenge 
  • commercial understanding of market control, such as the importance of clear and consistent messaging across the supply chain 
  • communication and transparency to enable consistent market messaging and continuous learning and improvement 

Effective governance means that the responsibilities of each of the parties involved are clearly understood and easily reported. Successful governance of the regional agency child and family social worker workforce includes:  

  • collaborative and cooperative working  
  • cross-regional communication 
  • continuous shared learning

Case study: London Innovation and Improvement Alliance (LIIA)

The London Innovation and Improvement Alliance (LIIA) has put in place many strategies to deal with various aspects of governance.  

The London Pledge 

The London Pledge is a regional commitment by all London boroughs, to address the reliance on agency staff and rising costs through collaboration rather than competition. 

Objectives 

Local authorities in London are working together to: 

  • improve information-sharing and accountability through data collection and data sharing systems  
  • give each area time to develop their offer of permanent work to agency child and family social workers to improve workforce stability 
  • enable local authorities to control costs through shared commitment  
  • improve engagement with the agency worker supply chain 

Governance structure 

Using an existing infrastructure, London established 5 sub-regional governance groups of between 5 to 8 local authorities/organisations.  

Arrangements are in place so that the content of each governance meeting is shared across all the groups. This maintains a consistent regional message. Each sub-regional group meeting is chaired by a sub-regional lead, usually a Director of Children's Services (DCS).  

Quarterly meetings 

In London, the programme manager meets with the Managed Service Providers (MSPs) on a quarterly basis, after the sub-regional local authority governance meetings take place. These quarterly meetings are to share information and raise any issues.  

Agenda template  

London has developed an agenda template which is used to shape the content of the quarterly meetings. This agenda includes:  

  • national and regional updates: latest data collection/over price cap position/local authority actions 
  • borough updates: what’s happening locally in relation to the agreement as well as wider workforce development. 

Areas for improvement  

London found the following approaches effective in driving improvement:  

  • DCS ownership rather than HR ownership so that accountability sits at decision-making level 
  • transparency about breaches and other actions, to build trust through encouraging open conversations and sharing decision-making 
  • ensuring availability of accurate data to inform understanding of the regional position and accurate decision-making, including providing visualisations that support trend analysis and identifying learning  
  • effective and regular communication with providers in the supply chain, sharing decision-making processes and outcomes. This supports transparency and accurate messaging.

Data collection  

London has been collecting data for some time and has developed a methodology and analysis system. The London census data is an example of the visualisation tools London LIIA has developed to inform local and regional workforce priorities.

It may be helpful to regional decision-making to collect and analyse additional data to the benchmarking data that will be available to local authorities as part of the new data collection. 

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The resources have been developed by Research in Practice in collaboration with DfE.
Published: 04 June 2025
Last updated: 04 June 2025