I feel good about cycling to work.

Yes, the road is full of crazed people (some of them pedestrians). Yes, it often rains. And yes, I have on occasion forgotten to pack my shoes. But being outside and getting exercise without having to join a gym keeps me reasonably sane.

Environmentally friendly, socially positive and easy on the wallet – cycling is an incredibly sustainable form of transport. It’s also good for the public purse. According to a report commissioned by Cycling England, each regular cyclist – someone who uses a bike more than three times a week – should save the NHS £28.30 a year.

New cycle paths, then, must be a brilliant investment. But there’s the rub. Yes, they’d save money for the local NHS Primary Care Trust – but the responsibility for building them lies with the local authority. If sustainable thinking is holistic systems thinking, how can it be achieved by public sector bodies that control only parts of the system?

Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) go a long way to joining the dots. They bring together local public, private and voluntary sector organisations in order to develop Local Area Agreements (LAAs) – co-ordinated initiatives that enable these sectors to work together more effectively. They are forums for the future in their own way, and naturally our Public Sector Programme wants to help them develop their ability to deliver sustainable solutions. We’re currently working on a project to bring together a group of LSPs both to co-create solutions in their own areas, and to share learning to develop best practice.

Look, for instance, at Leeds, where the city council – a Forum partner – is demonstrating the possibilities of such joined-up solutions. The Leeds Initiative is an LAA developed in partnership with the wider Leeds Strategic Plan. One of its innovative schemes has seen the council’s jobs and skills department working with the Leeds PCT to introduce regular exercise and fitness programmes for people currently on incapacity benefit, tackling debilitating problems such as back pain and, in turn, helping them back into long-term employment.

The Leeds initiative has rightly been recognised by the government’s Beacon Scheme for excellence in local government. But such stories should not really be beacons; they should be the norm. In developing our work with LSPs, we want to find out what makes for leadership at the LSP level. What factors stop them being just another level of governance and a hindrance to progress? What ensures they instead act as a vehicle for real change in an area, transforming the lives of citizens? We’ll let you know how we get on. In the meantime, I’ll be doing my bit to save my local NHS trust that £28.30 – every little counts.

Helen Clarkson is deputy director of Forum’s Public Sector Programme

This article also appears in the current issue of Green Futures

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