Abstract
Multi-agency service hubs have emerged as a prominent policy response to fragmented public service delivery in both the UK and Australia, premised on the assumption that co-location and shared governance will generate genuine collaboration. Yet the organisational and contractual arrangements that underpin these hubs are shaped by public procurement frameworks that embody fundamentally different logics. This paper reports on an ongoing comparative documentary analysis of four multi-agency hub case study sites: a Family Hub and a Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) in the UK, and two multi-agency human service hubs in Australia. Drawing on publicly available policy, strategy, and governance documents, the study examines how collaboration is conceptualised and enacted within each context, and how procurement frameworks shape and may constrain genuine collaborative practice. The paper contributes to theoretical debates on partnership, co-production, and public procurement by surfacing the structural tensions between collaborative rhetoric and contractual reality in multi-agency service delivery.