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 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.