Since the advent of Gershon, we have seen much activity in local government setting up joint purchasing agreements, streamlining processes and cutting back-office admin staff – all of which has taken much of our political and managerial energy. But next on the agenda is the challenge of coming up with longer-term savings by sharing ever-more services, using transformational IT, and finding new ways of working.

This will require even more vision, innovation and determination. The momentum must not be at the expense of missing out on further quick wins. We must avoid the temptation to find an efficiency and then stop. And we must continually broaden the search for operational efficiency from the parts not reached yet, even if our formal Gershon target has been reached. There are areas, however, where savings have reached a plateau, and this inevitably leads to consideration of new approaches, such as adopting shared services.