This article deals with UK Education and Health Action Zones, area-based partnership programmes, taking account of New Labour's 'modernising government' agenda and the academic partnership literature. Formative zone experiences again highlight major obstacles to effective local partnership working, exacerbated by the essentially top-down nature of the initiatives, albeit accommodating realities on the ground. Despite at one level prioritising changes in process, political pressures for rapid results were not easily compatible with policy innovation and longer-term collaborative infrastructure. Whether relating to the broader macro patterns of change affecting UK urban local governance to which action zones are contributing, or to the specific micro dynamics of these particular partnership initiatives, tensions inherent in the above dilemmas are far from being resolved.
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