The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has chosen community group network Locality UK to deliver its £11.6m fund aimed at bolstering charities' links with local authorities.

The Local Covenant Partnerships Fund aims to invest in targeted grant funding to support partnership agreements in 15 council areas, selected as among the most deprived in the country.

Funding has been made available as part of the government’s Civil Society Covenant agenda to improve partnership working between charities and decision makers.

Money will be distributed over the next three years to “build sustainable partnership infrastructure” between charities, community groups and local politicians, drive investment in local charity sectors and improve the evidence base of successful partnership working.

Locality will deliver the fund in a consortium with Collaborate CIC, Renaisi-TSIP, and Demos.

Through a separate procurement process IFF Research has been appointed to evaluate the fund, alongside Social Finance and Alma Economics.

The investment in partnerships between charities and councils comes amid a period of local government upheaval due to reorganisation.

District and borough councils are being scrapped over the next two years through the local government reorganisation agenda to make way for larger unitary authorities. In addition, the government wants to see regional strategic authorities set up in all areas.

A government funded report published during the summer warned that reorganisation and devolution “present significant challenges’ to civil society’s links with councils locally, mainly due to boundary changes, which will impact where organisations work, how they operate and “the funder relationships on which they rely”.

Published by the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA), which represents local charity sector infrastructure bodies, and Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE), it stressed the need for strong partnership working between local charities and newly created authorities at an early stage.

It said that collaboration between charity bodies and councils “will become increasingly important” amid LGR and devolution, adding “as local authority boundaries change, organisations will need to work together more closely, develop new partnership models and combine local knowledge with strategic influence".

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