The advantages and difficulties of partnership working for a new university at crisis point in the use of people, time and facilities for the development of widening participation initiatives. The focus is on local partnerships which bring together a wide range of organisations from public, private and voluntary sectors to increase participation in education and training in the South Wales valleys. Patterns of development were analysed for four consortium-based partnerships. Membership profiles revealed a pronounced dominance by public sector representatives. It was noted that after an initial interest in community partnership operations employers and voluntary sector representatives gradually stopped attending. Meetings were linked with a growing level of administrative detail and local educational authority and school representatives addressed an agenda of education and training provision for 14-19-year-olds; it is suspected that this also explained to some extent the non-attendance of business and voluntary sector representatives because they perceived 14-19-year-old youth dominated agendas as peripheral to their core interests. By contrast, the working groups in the partnerships were characterised by more grassroots involvement from a variety of sectors. The authors identify four possible strategies for meaningful engagement in numerous and concurrent local partnerships.