Risks should not stop you working with partners, but they should be captured in your risk and issues register and you need to identify mitigations against these risks.
Some potential risks include:
The partnership results in wide-scale complaints – for example, if a partner engages in political campaigning there may be a perception that the ERO is not politically neutral
The partner misrepresents your message - do they understand the relationship and their responsibilities? Do they understand and keep to the message you want to get across to residents and to what extent does it matter if they don’t? Are they clear when the work ends, or when the message changes?
The partner does not carry out the work they agreed - is this risk more significant because you have put time and money into the relationship? Perhaps they misunderstood the workload, or find themselves with an unexpected priority, or perhaps they start to incur additional costs and expect re-imbursement
Registration fatigue – initial enthusiasm might fade so it will be important to try to maintain momentum in any partnership work, including by keeping up communication and providing feedback
The cost outweighs the benefits - you may produce comprehensive materials and the organisation does little to help support your registration work
You should consider developing lines to take in the event a partnership organisation attracts negative press which might implicate your local authority.
You should evaluate how effective you were at mitigating any risks when working with partners. These learning points should be reflected when updating your engagement strategy to help inform your approach to future partnership working.