Working Together Grade 7 Example Statement (500 Words)

SMy department funds a grants programme for community energy projects, delivered with an arm's-length body that assesses applications. Applicants faced two sets of guidance that sometimes contradicted each other, assessment times were slipping, and the relationship between my policy team and the body's operations team had become formal, cautious and slow. Contact happened mostly through a complaints inbox, and ministers wanted improvement before the next funding round.

TAs the Grade 7 sponsor of the programme, I was tasked with turning a distant client-contractor relationship into a genuine partnership with one coherent service for applicants, without merging the organisations or blurring accountability.

AI started by spending two days inside the arm's-length body, sitting with assessors and listening to their calls, before I made any proposals. I learned that their staff felt blamed for problems created by our unclear policy intent, while my team felt shut out of decisions that affected applicants. I shared these findings with both leadership teams and proposed a joint working agreement covering shared objectives, decision rights and a named counterpart for every role, which both chief executives signed and announced in a joint blog. To rebuild trust, I organised a half-day session where 25 staff from both organisations mapped the full applicant experience together; the single biggest frustration, duplicated eligibility checks, was something neither side could see alone. I set up monthly joint planning, co-chaired by me and my opposite number, with a standing agenda item for raising tensions early, and quarterly away days rotating between our offices so each team learned the other's working culture. I persuaded both finance teams to align reporting cycles so the body stopped rebuilding the same figures in two formats, saving days each month. When we disagreed over risk appetite on a fast-track route, I arranged a workshop with both legal teams so we debated the actual regulations rather than positions, and we agreed a pilot with safeguards. When a difficult ministerial request landed mid-year, I brought the body into the response from the first hour rather than handing down instructions, and we shaped the answer together. I co-authored the new single guidance pack with one of their assessors, testing drafts with six community groups, and I set up a shared mailbox so applicants got one answer within two days whoever they asked. I also launched a buddy scheme pairing our policy officers with assessors for a day a month, which surfaced dozens of small misunderstandings before they grew. Finally, I created a joint induction so new starters in either organisation spent their first week with both teams.

RIn the first year we published one joint guidance pack, applicant queries fell by 45 per cent and average assessment time dropped from 14 to nine weeks across 3,200 applications. Collaboration scores rose by 21 points in my team's survey and 18 in theirs. The partnership's joint board now plans the programme's future, and the department has reused our working agreement for two other arm's-length relationships.