At the end of May, along with our partners across the city, we launched a Civic Agreement for Bath. Signatories to the agreement are the University of Bath, Bath Spa University, Bath and North East Somerset Council and Royal United Hospitals Bath.
This has been a long and complex project, and along the way, all of our separate organisations have had to do a lot of work both internally and with each other to find effective ways of being civically responsible and of working in partnership. I thought it would be useful to set out a bit of detail on what a civic agreement is, the work that happened to get to this stage, and what it means for the future of collaboration in our local place.
What is a civic agreement?
A Civic Agreement (also sometimes known as a civic university agreement) is a formal agreement between a university or universities and their local community, typically involving local government, NHS, businesses, and other stakeholders. Localities all over the country have been developing civic agreements since around 2018. The purpose of a civic agreement is to strengthen the relationship between the university sector and local community and to address local challenges and opportunities collaboratively.
What is Bath and North East Somerset’s civic agreement?
Bane's civic agreement is between Bath and North East Somerset Council, Bath Spa University, the University of Bath, and Royal United Hospitals (RUH) Bath. It has two strands - the first sets out an intention for the four ‘anchor institutions’ to work together and the mechanisms through which this collaboration will take place. The second is a commitment to internal scrutiny of each organisations ‘civic behaviours’ such as its procurement policies, HR policies, environmental policies etc.
What is the background to Bath’s civic agreement?
A public commitment to the development of a civic agreement was made in January 2020, and since then the four organisations involved have worked together to establish what their individual and collective objectives are, and to understand where there is synergy or disagreement. Through this process, significant connections have been developed at all levels between the organisations and a number of processes to support collaboration have been developed. It has also been proven through a series of collaborative projects that we share many of the same objectives, have little competition between our organisations and each organisation stands to benefit greatly from working together - as does our locality. This agreement was finalised in 2023, and the launch in May 2024 was both a celebration of the journey of collaboration we have been on, and a look to the future and what the partnership can achieve.
What does the Civic Agreement document change?
This document isn’t a starting point - it's the culmination of four years of trial and error in developing our partnership and in putting systems in place at all levels within and between our organisations to undertake this partnership work. A key structure through which the work has and will be Future Ambition Board - you can read more about that here. And huge amounts have been achieved already - you can see some examples of what has been done already on our partnership website and its associated blog. However, there is so much more we can still do - we are all facing some huge local challenges which we will be better placed to tackle in partnership.
How did you decide on the themes highlighted within the document?
The themes chosen encompass some of the biggest challenges in our region at the moment, they don’t cover everything but are areas in which collaboration between our organisations can have the greatest impact right now. However, these are always under review, and are organic in nature - new themes will emerge and existing themes will evolve. The themes reflect groups of people and organisations with significant strengths that can find innovative approaches when working together that aren’t available when working in silos.
Why these four organisations and not others?
The four organisations that are signatories to the agreement are Bath's 'anchor institutions' - this means they are some of the
biggest employers locally, are unlikely to leave the area, and each have a civic as well as a corporate mission. However it must be stressed that this is not an exclusive club, this is about collaboration and while the agreement starts here, the Future Ambition Board has space for all local organisations to get involved and many already are.
You can visit the Future Ambition Civic Agreement website and learn more about this work here.
Respond
