I sometimes think that working in partnership is a cross between an art form and just very hard graft. Multiple partners equals multiple opinions, multiple agendas. But also multiple ideas, ways of doing things, lots of learning, and many different ways to crack a problem, in our case eleven heads are almost always better than one.

In Hertfordshire we have multiple partnerships, but one of these is a strong partnership of eleven local authorities; our Hertfordshire District Partnership has been in place for the last five years and includes all the 10 district and borough councils in Hertfordshire along with the Public Health department in the county council. Together over those last five years we've delivered over 213 public health projects together to benefit the residents of Hertfordshire.