Steve Knights reports on the findings of The MJ/Steria survey into councils' views on how shared services will affect the localism agenda.

Everyone agrees we should be striving for greater efficiency in the provision of public services. And whereas that goal was once considered a nice thing to shoot for, today it is absolutely unavoidable. The state of the public finances demands that we all learn, in that famous if unattractive phrase, to do ‘more with less.' We certainly have to do more, differently.