As higher education institutions increasingly seek to scale and access the benefits of staff-student partnerships more routinely many have established institutional programmes. Insight into scaling partnership activity across the institution is integral to the success of such programmes. This qualitative study investigates how a new programme at a UK university sought to establish the conditions for successful partnership working. A series of semi-structured interviews offer insights into the early experiences of the programme. By adopting a reflexive thematic analysis we find that partnerships are vulnerable to variable approaches to facilitation and that a greater emphasis on staff preparedness is warranted. The research uncovered tensions between the partnership scheme and other forms of student engagement e.g. student representation. As a result, clarity around the identity of partnership schemes, what partnership working involves and how it interacts with other student opportunities across the institution is critical.