THE Stockton Renaissance Partnership has been named as one of the country's Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) to be awarded accreditation.

The announcement by Lord Falconer, Minister for Housing, Planning and Regeneration, puts the Stockton Renaissance Partnership in line for more than £2.9m of Neighbourhood Renewal Funding in 2002/3.

The minister has scrutinised each of the LSPs as part of a detailed accreditation process, which looked at how inclusive the partnerships were and how effectively they had performed since being launched last April.

Stockton Renaissance went through a rigorous self-assessment as part of the accreditation and came up with an action plan to build on and further develop the partnership.

Councillor Bob Gibson, chairman of the partnership board, said: "From the outset we were determined to build upon the strong network of established partnerships in the borough by pulling them together under the renaissance banner, rather than create a new series of partnerships.

"As it is, we are benefiting from the shared experience and knowledge of partnerships that already had strong roots in the community."

The LSPs were assessed against six criteria - whether they were strategic, inclusive, action-focused, performance-managed, efficient and addressing learning and development.

Their self-assessments were then put to the test as partners and agencies locally, regionally and nationally were asked to comment by the regional development agency, One NorthEast