Rod Aldridge

Rod Aldridge is an entrepreneur with over 40 years experience of working in the public and private sectors.

He is the founder of the Capita Group retiring in July 2006 as Chairman. Subsequently he established The Aldridge Foundation to continue his work on public service reform and to focus on his charitable activities.

• Educational underachievement & Social Exclusion
• Public Service Reform Partnership and Development
• Community Engagement

Centre for Public Service Partnerships

The Centre for Public Service Partnerships (CPSP) is a joint initiative of the School of Public Policy and the Business School at the University of Birmingham, funded by The Aldridge Foundation, University alumnus Professor Keith Palmer and Balfour Beatty Plc.

Mission of the Centre

Partnerships are increasingly fundamental to public service commissioning and delivery. In the UK they play a key role in the delivery of complex and personalised services; in meeting new statutory duties placed on local government and other local agencies; in building the essential transport and other infrastructure required for a competitive economy and service delivery; in achieving service transformation and value for money; and in community regeneration.

Whilst partnership should be regarded as a means rather than an end, it is increasingly a critical component of modern public services. Therefore, it is essential that practitioners and policy makers adopt and practice the most appropriate and effective partnership working for any given situation.

This requires access to evidence based research, intelligence and advice. CPSP will provide a core research and a forum to enable this by:

• Being the leading source of authoritative, evidence based advice on public service partnerships for government, the wider public sector, the third sector and the corporate sector, academics and other stakeholders.
• Undertaking and actively disseminate leading academic research on an international basis on public service partnerships and other forms of strategic alliances between public sector organisations; and those organisations and the business and third sectors.
• Acting as a major link between the academic, policy and practitioner communities.
• Providing a forum for dialogue and debate between the sectors on the best ways to deliver effective outcomes through partnership.
• Being a thought leader and commentator on public service partnerships.

Aims

In general terms, the Centre will be one of the central ways in which the Aldridge Foundation will pursue its interest in the reform of public services through the more proactive engagement of the private sector in their delivery. This would be manifested through a number of practical outputs:

• Centre policy publications and seminars being presented as supported by The Aldridge Foundation/Birmingham Business School/School of Public Policy;
• The Aldridge Foundation being invited to open and/or chair the seminars and/or press conferences at which these publications could be launched;
• The Centre providing material to inform presentations and publications that would constitute the independent work of The Aldridge Foundation, where agreed;
• The Aldridge Foundation will receive the naming of the Senior Research Fellow at the Centre;
• The Aldridge Foundation being a core member of the Centre’s Roundtable on Public Private Partnerships (and being consulted about other members as part of the deliberations of the Advisory Board discussed below); and
• The potential for Aldridge Foundation research personnel to be granted visiting status within either BBS or SPP, subject to fulfilling the existing criteria.

For the press release announcing the new Centre for Public Sector Partnerships click here.