BSF aims to establish strategic local investment programmes to support educational transformation through capital investment in school buildings and ICT. The government wants to harness the best of both the public and private sectors to deliver this outcome. Local Education Partnerships reduce the number of competitive procurements that have to be carried out and streamline the procurement process. The LEP is a company that will provide long-term partnering services for a local authority so that the aims of BSF can be delivered. It is a joint venture company comprising the local authority, BSFI and a private sector partner.

The local authority has a contract with the LEP called the Strategic Partnering Agreement, which gives exclusive rights to the LEP to deliver projects for a fixed period, likely to be 10 years. By having financial investment at risk in a vehicle, the public sector is sharing – proportionate to its shareholding – in the risks and rewards that are otherwise retained wholly by the private sector.  This gives both public and private sector partners an interest in seeing the LEP succeed, which for the public sector shareholding means returns which can be re-invested into local services.

Overall, the benefits of the LEP approach are: better design quality, significant cost efficiencies, shorter timescales and improved educational outcomes. Some local authorities are also recognising the potential of the LEP in terms of procuring wider services than those just related to BSF. These include primary schools, health care and wider regeneration strategies.

The core rationale for the LEP being a joint venture company, with public sector investment alongside the private sector, is to:

• embed partnership working
• establish local entities specifically focussed on achieving the aims of the BSF programme
• secure transparency of working
• generate long term value for money
• incentivise both the public and private sector to achieve success together

The LEP brings together the public and private sectors together in an organisation where there is common purpose to achieving the same outcomes. The private sector can bring delivery expertise, development capital, supply chain and partnering efficiencies. The local authority, through its understanding of the local community, can help ensure that the needs of the authority, of schools and of the wider local community are met. Representation of the national programme through PfS can add value by bringing experience of best practice across the programme, help ensure that the implementation of the local programme is fulfilling national programme objectives, and create an effective "broker", where the need arises, between public and private sectors.