As local authorities strive to deliver services with pressures on resources and increasing costs, they may be looking for opportunities to achieve savings and enhance services through entering into new outsourcing contracts to make them work better for the authorities or to end them and negotiate new contracts with better terms.

As well as achieving efficiencies and savings through the use of contracts, local authorities also try to bring benefits to their communities through their contractual arrangements, where this is lawfully possible. Legislation being progressed in England and Wales looks set to increase the opportunities to do this.