Across England, communities are facing the growing challenge of drug-related harm. Behind the headlines, a network of local drug partnerships in England is working to change how these issues get tackled at a grassroots level. A major government process evaluation, published in May 2026, sheds light on how these partnerships operate, what is working, and where the most urgent gaps lie.

One gap stands out above all others: prevention is being consistently overlooked.

What Are Drug Partnerships in England?

Combating Drugs Partnerships (CDPs) are multi-agency forums set up across all 103 local areas in England. They bring together organisations that rarely used to sit in the same room, including local authorities, the NHS, police, probation services, housing providers, Jobcentre Plus, and the voluntary sector, to co-ordinate a joined-up response to drug-related harm.

The government established these partnerships as part of its ten-year national drug strategy, From Harm to Hope, which launched in 2021 with more than £3 billion of investment behind it. The strategy set out three core goals: breaking drug supply chains, building a treatment and recovery system, and reducing overall demand for drugs.

Verian, working with NatCen and CECAN, conducted the evaluation. They drew on surveys of 66 CDPs, 125 in-depth interviews, and systems mapping workshops across five areas. The result is one of the most detailed pictures yet of how drug partnerships in England function on the ground.

Why Drug Partnerships in England Are Leaving Prevention Behind

This is where the findings become most concerning.

When CDPs shared their priorities, 44% highlighted improving treatment as their main focus. Just 15% prioritised enforcement, and only around a third had any dedicated focus on prevention work. A further 25% of CDPs identified children and young people as a key priority, yet organisations representing this group rarely appeared in formal CDP membership. Young people are being named as a priority while simultaneously being left out of the room where decisions get made.

This imbalance is partly structural. Local authorities receive ring-fenced funding specifically for drug and alcohol treatment through the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID). Prevention activities have no equivalent dedicated funding stream. One strategic stakeholder described the steer from central government as clearly pointing towards treatment rather than prevention, which means preventative roles and community-facing programmes often never get off the ground.

Treatment outcomes are easier to measure than the long-term benefits of prevention work. Evidencing the impact of a school-based awareness campaign on future drug use is genuinely difficult. That makes it harder for local areas to justify the investment. The National Combating Drugs Outcomes Framework (NCDOF) includes no outcomes related to prevention at all, which deepens this gap further.

Reaching young people before problems develop, supporting families early, and building community resilience are some of the most valuable things a partnership can do. Right now, these activities are the most underfunded and undervalued.

What the Numbers Reveal About Combating Drugs Partnerships

The evaluation produced statistics that show a partnership model with genuine strengths but a clear blind spot around prevention.

97% of CDP representatives said their partnership improved how organisations work together. 70% reported better collaboration in identifying individuals at risk. Around 75% felt all partner organisations shared a clear mission to deliver the national drug strategy. These are encouraging signs of joined-up working.

Yet just 32% of CDPs had any specific focus on prevention as a strand of their work. Only 6% prioritised reducing drug supply. Children and young people’s organisations were largely absent from formal membership, despite one in four CDPs naming this group as a priority. The numbers make the imbalance impossible to ignore.

Outcomes also varied considerably across areas. Some CDPs functioned primarily as information-sharing forums rather than driving meaningful change. One stakeholder described the partnership as “probably a bit of a waste of everybody’s time” where little had been achieved beyond what would have happened anyway.

Drug partnerships in England have real potential. That potential is not being realised equally, and prevention is bearing the brunt of that failure.

The Biggest Barriers Holding Combating Drugs Partnerships Back

The most commonly cited barrier across every research strand was the absence of dedicated funding for partnership activities. CDP members must facilitate meetings, co-ordinate multi-agency work, and deliver joint initiatives entirely within their existing budgets. For already stretched organisations like the NHS and police, that is a significant ask.

Data sharing presented another persistent challenge. Different organisations use different systems, apply different reporting standards, and hold varying levels of comfort around information governance. In some areas, no overarching data-sharing agreement existed at all. That created gaps in the evidence base and made effective planning harder.

Reaching harder-to-reach communities also proved difficult. People from minority ethnic communities, families affected by a loved one’s addiction, and those facing multiple forms of stigma and discrimination were all cited as groups that existing CDP approaches struggled to reach. These are precisely the communities where early intervention and prevention could have the greatest impact.

What Good Drug Partnerships in England Look Like

The evaluation did highlight encouraging examples where drug partnerships in England are getting things right.

Strong pre-existing relationships between organisations consistently emerged as the most important enabler. Where local areas already had established partnerships before CDPs formed, they moved faster, shared data more easily, and avoided duplicating effort.

Leadership made a real difference. SROs who were enthusiastic, well-connected across public health and local politics, and who favoured a collaborative style brought partners together far more effectively. In Greater Manchester, a deputy mayor co-chairing the CDP added political weight and broad networks to the role.

Lancashire offers one of the clearest examples of prevention done well. A dedicated prevention subgroup worked with school governors to develop a whole-school approach for young people at risk of exclusion. The group connected toxicology data, police intelligence, and school-based interventions in a genuinely co-ordinated way. That kind of upstream, community-rooted work is exactly what more drug partnerships in England should be doing.

What Needs to Change

The evaluation sets out clear recommendations for central government. These include providing dedicated funding for CDP operations, creating forums for partnerships to share best practice, supplying customisable templates for data-sharing agreements, and commissioning a long-term impact evaluation.

The most important recommendation, from a prevention perspective, is this: the government must clarify whether prevention is a genuine national priority and back that commitment with dedicated funding and measurable outcomes in the NCDOF. Without that signal from the centre, local partnerships will continue to default towards what is easiest to fund and easiest to measure.

For local partnerships, the priorities should be strengthening governance, genuinely including lived experience voices, engaging schools and young people’s organisations, and investing in community-level awareness and early intervention work.

The infrastructure of drug partnerships in England exists. What it needs is a clearer prevention mandate and the resources to act on it.

Communities Deserve Better Than a System Focused on Crisis Alone

The communities most affected by drug-related harm are often those with the fewest resources to respond to it. A system that only responds once harm has already occurred is not truly protecting anyone.

Prevention is not a soft option. It is the most cost-effective, most humane, and most sustainable approach available. Reaching people before dependency takes hold, supporting young people before they are exposed to risk, and building communities that are informed and resilient; these are the goals that drug partnerships in England should be organised around.

The 2026 evaluation shows the partnership model working in places, and struggling in others. The clearest lesson it offers is this: when prevention leads, communities benefit. It is time for that lesson to shape how these partnerships are funded, governed, and measured.

Source: dbrecoveryresources