Collaboration templates and guidance

Bristol City Council, through its Enabling Commissioning Framework, has worked on the attached documents for the VCSE sector to use. The collaboration template has been developed with the intention of facilitating the formation of collaborations and avoiding the inconsistency and duplicative costs of agreements being developed by many organisations.

The template has yet to be approved (see note below)* by Bristol City Council's Legal Services from the commissioner perspective. It must be noted that the council's position is that the template is provided for information only and that providers must take their own legal advice to be assured that the template is appropriate from a provider perspective.

The local authority recognises that the cost of legal advice is an issue for many organisations. Its intention is that bidders use the template to submit a draft collaboration agreement as part of the tender proposal. Providers will need to take their own specific legal advice but this will be upon 'contract award', that is, when an individual provider has been offered a contract and, therefore, has confirmation of funds.

• Collaboration template (provisional)
• Matrix of council requirements in respect of various forms of collaborative working (provisional)

* NB. The previous version of the template was approved by Bristol City Council's Legal Services (Nov 2011). This version, which includes no substantive changes, requires a final approval and formal adoption by the Enabling Commissioning Board. The template was originally promised in July 2011, has been successfully used in recent commissioning processes, and VCSE organisations are waiting for this guidance. I have, therefore, published it here and will seek the final approval of the Enabling Commissioning Board. Mark Hubbard, Compact Liaison Officer, 21/12/11.