Regional Sports Partnerships – governing the in-between

From partnership to public-purpose institutions: Daniel Taylor looks at how RSPs have evolved in Wales

Regional Sports Partnerships were established by Sport Wales to strengthen coordination and collaboration across sport and physical activity at a regional level.

Their original purpose was pragmatic and enabling: to bring together local authorities, governing bodies, clubs and community organisations, reduce fragmentation, and support the delivery of national priorities in ways that reflected local context. They were conceived as partnerships rather than standalone institutions, valued for their ability to convene, align and coordinate activity across complex local systems.

Since then, the landscape around them has shifted. Expectations of sport and physical activity have expanded beyond participation and performance to encompass health, inequality, place, prevention and wellbeing. Funding has become more strategic, and relationships with health, education and wider public services have deepened.

As a result, Regional Sports Partnerships now occupy a far more significant position within their regions. Many find themselves shaping strategy, influencing systems and stewarding public value across complex networks of partners.

What does it mean to govern well in that space?

The challenge of the in-between

RSPs sit between sectors, between levels of government, and between strategy and delivery. They rarely possess hard authority, yet they exercise real influence. They are accountable to funders, partners and communities, often simultaneously. Their legitimacy rests not on mandate alone but on trust, relationships and perceived fairness.

This makes them fundamentally different from traditional charities, public bodies or delivery organisations. The governance challenge they face is not primarily operational or technical. It is institutional. It concerns purpose, authority, voice and accountability in systems where none of these are neatly bounded.

Too often, these challenges are framed as questions of capacity or capability: whether boards have the right skills, whether executives are stretched, whether funding is sufficient. These matter, but they are not the root issue. The deeper challenge is one of governance maturity.

From delivery mindset to institutional stewardship

Many RSPs are still governed, consciously or unconsciously, as delivery bodies. Board conversations gravitate towards programmes, outputs and funding compliance. Assurance dominates. Strategy is present but is often treated as a document rather than a living frame for decision-making.

As RSPs move towards an institutional role, this mindset becomes limiting. Institutions are not defined by what they deliver but by what they hold: purpose, values, relationships and public trust over time. Governing an institution requires boards to think less about control and more about stewardship.

This shift is subtle but significant. It asks boards to move from asking ‘Are we delivering?’ to ‘Are we enabling the right conditions for long-term public value?’

Structure helps, but does not mature governance

Across Wales, RSPs have adopted a range of governance and legal models. Some operate with single boards, others with dual-board arrangements separating governance and partnership functions. Some are hosted, others independent. These structural choices matter and, in many cases, reflect thoughtful attempts to respond to complexity.

Dual board models, for example, can create space for both assurance and voice: a governance board focused on oversight, compliance and fiduciary responsibility and a partnership board focused on strategy, commissioning and system leadership. Where they work well, they allow different kinds of authority to coexist without confusion.

But structure alone does not create maturity. Poorly understood roles, weak information flows or unresolved power dynamics can undermine even the most elegant models. The risk is mistaking architectural neatness for governing effectiveness.

What matters is whether boards, whatever their form, can hold purpose clearly, exercise judgement rather than default to process, and learn as the system around them evolves.

King V and the case for public value governance

This is where King V offers a useful lens, not as a code to be adopted, but as a philosophy to be understood. King V starts from the premise that governance exists to enable the creation of public value, broadly conceived. It recognises that modern organisations operate within complex systems of stakeholders, interests and forms of capital and that legitimacy and trust are as important as compliance.

For RSPs, this resonates strongly. Their value is not financial alone; it lies in social capital, community trust, inclusion, health outcomes and long-term cultural change. Governing for public value requires boards to move beyond narrow performance metrics and ask more searching questions about impact, equity and sustainability.

King V’s emphasis on ethical leadership, stakeholder inclusivity and integrated thinking speaks directly to the realities RSPs face. It legitimises a governance approach that is adaptive, relational and purpose-led, rather than purely procedural.

Leadership as stewardship of place

In this context, leadership takes on a different character. Chairs and senior leaders are not simply leading organisations; they are stewarding place-based systems. Their authority derives less from position and more from credibility, integrity and the ability to convene across boundaries.

This places new demands on boards. Leadership must be shared rather than concentrated. Youth and community voice must be embedded, not consulted sporadically. Inequality cannot be treated as a thematic priority; it must be a strategic lens through which decisions are made.

Boards that succeed in this space do not seek to control the system. They seek to enable it, while remaining clear about their own role and responsibilities within it.

Learning as an institutional capability

Perhaps the clearest marker of governance maturity in RSPs is their approach to learning. In a stable environment, boards can rely on precedent and routine. In an evolving system, this is not enough.

RSPs are operating in conditions of uncertainty: shifting policy, emerging evidence, and changing community needs. Governing well in such conditions requires boards to treat learning as a core function, not an optional extra. This includes learning not only from data and evaluation but also from experience, feedback and failure.

Maturity frameworks can be powerful here, not as judgement tools but as shared languages for reflection. They allow boards to locate themselves honestly, identify gaps and plan development in a way that aligns governance, leadership and impact. Crucially, they also provide assurance to funders and partners that learning is being taken seriously.

From partnership to institution

The question, then, is not whether RSPs should become public purpose institutions. In many respects, they already are. The question is whether their governance arrangements, leadership cultures and board practices are evolving quickly enough to support that reality.

Institutions endure because they are trusted. Trust is built through clarity of purpose, ethical behaviour, inclusion and the ability to learn and adapt over time. These are governance achievements, not operational ones.

Regional Sports Partnerships have an opportunity to model a different kind of public value governance: one that is place-based, relational and grounded in wellbeing rather than outputs alone. Doing so will require boards to step confidently into their institutional role, embracing the ambiguity of the in-between rather than seeking to resolve it away.

If they succeed, the impact will be felt not just in sport and physical activity but also in the health, cohesion and resilience of the communities they serve.