Ministers in England will be watching Glasgow with interest. For, there is a whiff of back to the future over the city's ambitious plans to link all its public services in the city into one umbrella organisation.

Many will recall the vast empire that was Strathclyde RC, once the largest local authority in Europe, before it was scrapped in the 1990s. But then a decade on, reorganisation is back on the agenda, and this time any change has to include all the public sector and not just local government, as COSLA itself has emphasised. This is not about merging councils but about reforming wider public sector structures. It is likely to be easier to achieve in Scotland than in England but, nonetheless, the message is clear – back offices must merge, services must join up, and councils are only part of a wider public service whole.