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Voluntary Sector North West
St. Thomas Centre

Ardwick Green North
Manchester
M12 6FZ
Tel: 0161 276 9300
Fax: 0161 276 9301
Email: info@vsnw.org.uk

Five Counties Partnership

Five Counties Partnership logo The Five Counties Partnership is made up of the lead bodies of the voluntary sector infrastructure consortia for Greater Manchester, Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Merseyside and Cheshire.

The Partnership aims to;

• Be integral to the development of strategic relationships within and beyond the third sector in the North West

• Respond collectively to policy

• Undertake joint projects

• Share information and best practice

• Collaborate regionally and seek opportunities to draw funds into the sector

Originally the Three Counties project (Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester) the group received funding in 2000 from Lloyds TSB Collaboration Fund to explore ways in which to share knowledge and good practice, and come up with some creative insights about the way forward as “sub-regional infrastructure organizations”. Undertaking a range of projects on information and data sharing, networking researchers into the third sector, providing ICT management training and developing actual and virtual support hubs at country level, the project was absolutely cutting edge in bringing infrastructure organizations together across boundaries.

The second phase of the groups funding from Lloyds TSB in 2003, enabled it to extend to Five Counties (Merseyside and Cheshire), with a focus on developing and promoting best practice in the use of ICT, joint work on data protection, data management, the creation of subregional e-communities networks and some early work on data sharing.

The advent of ChangeUp led to a shift in membership and emphasis with increasing demands from regional public sector bodies and funders drawing the partnership more into regional policy and voice. Considerable work was done by the partnership in 2006 – 08 to build relationships between significant organizations at regional level and it was instrumental in developing a coordinated NW infrastructure partnership to encourage joint working and raise the profile of the sector.