This paper discusses the role of trust and shared goals in relation to participation in inter-organisational and multi-agency partnerships. It draws on a study of partnership working in England and focuses in particular on the perspectives of senior managers of post-16 education and training providers with substantial experience of working in local and regional partnerships. The research explored the concept and practice of partnership through a qualitative case study of a sub-regional partnership and the main methods used for data collection were observations of partnership meetings, documentary evidence of partnership working and semi-structured interviews with members of the partnership. The findings presented in this paper emanate principally from the interview data and reveal the importance and differentiated nature of trust in partnership working and the place of both trust and shared goals in effective and sustained partnerships.