“THE strength of our partnership has always been our willingness to work at it and our drive to make it happen. When difficulties come you can’t duck out of them,” says Steve Bramwell, group director for community-based services at Gateshead Council.
There is a strong philosophy in the borough that partnerships are about a realisation of common needs, not about bureaucratic meetings, he says. “It’s about people coming together and working together for the common good.”
The desire to make Gateshead a better place to live has been a key goal for people working in the partnership, according to Norma Harris, director of governance and corporate development at Gateshead primary care trust. “When someone says that it’s hard to do something we can point to