Eight Scottish councils press ahead with major shared services programme

A massive shared services programme is to go ahead in west central Scotland.

The Clyde Valley Councils partnership’s shared services would cover 35% of Scotland’s population. Areas due to be shared are waste management, health and social care, support services and social transport.

The participating councils are: East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire.

Options will be developed in workstreams this summer and councils will decide in the autumn which they wish to pursue.

The partnership said the support services stream, which will be led by East Renfrewshire and Inverclyde, was “believed to be the most ambitious shared service project currently being taken forward in the UK”, designed to create a publicly-owned organisation delivering finance, payroll, revenues and benefits, human resources, IT and customer services.

The proposals do not as yet include shared legal services, and no decision has been taken on whether this should be considered in future.

The waste management stream would be led by North Lanarkshire, health and social care by Renfrewshire and social transport by Glasgow.

Ronnie McColl, chair of the Clyde Valley Community Planning Partnership, said: “Given the scale of financial challenge facing local government there is a clear need to introduce new and innovative ways of delivering services.

“These changes aren’t simply motivated by cost. We genuinely believe that by working collaboratively and maximising our combined resources we could actually deliver a better service to the local community.”