The Core Skills Development Partnership recognises the importance of taking a structured and systematic approach to evaluation. This is to ensure accountability; to understand what creates effective strategies and models; and to be able to disseminate good practice. Our evaluation takes place at three levels: as a contributor to the wider regeneration picture in Birmingham; as a Partnership set of workings; and the evaluation of the separate activities supported by us. One of the biggest challenges has been to implement cost-effective approaches to evaluation that are within a coherent and consistent framework across such a wide diversity of developments. The quality of this Partnership's working has been highlighted in a national review of contributions to lifelong learning, undertaken on behalf of the Department for Education and Employment. The consultant undertaking this review spoke of "the absolute privilege of seeing real partnership working in action, rather than lots of partnership rhetoric" This national research described the Partnership as a particularly innovative example of the use of regeneration funding. It also recommended that key organisations should explore the Birmingham Core Skills Development Partnership's approach and strategy, since this can serve as a model that could be widely replicated. Last year we were part of a mid-term evaluation of the wider Single Regeneration Budget activities in Birmingham. This confirmed our progress in: establishing "joined-up" ways of working and joint planning; enhancing existing local and national strategies; with a focus on getting better outcomes from existing mainstream programmes meeting the Core Skills Development Partnership's own strategic objectives; using efficient and cost-effective manageArialment and administrative processes; meeting the needs of under-performing groups, bringing additional benefits to disadvantaged communities. The next stage of the evaluation will focus on the extent to which we are really making sustainable differences, that would not have happened without our support. All of this is underwritten by regular evaluations of activArialities and the benefits they are bringing; annual monitoring of our systems and processes; annual reviews of our progress against plans; the regular presentation of our approaches to other organisations, in order to get constant feedback. The full evaluation package comes together as a coherent whole which forms the Evaluation Strategy approved by the Board. We believe that cost effective evaluation within a broader framework can help the Partnership to be reassured that: target groups arAriale benefiting as intended; we are not inadvertently drifting away from our development principles or our own strategic objectives; we are contributing to really making a difference; we are in control of the processes and procedures in cost-efficient ways; the existence of the Partnership means that more is being done than could be done by the partners alone; Birmingham as a whole is being regenerated. The evaluation highlighted the robustness of our baseline information (we knew what we were impacting upon); the clarity of our next 3 year targets (we knew the changes we have to bring about); and the links between these two (we knew that each year's business plan would take us step-by-step nearer to the targets).