When sharing is child's play

摘要

Sharing is a virtue ingrained in most of us at a young age. We learn the advantages of engaging with our peers, realising the benefits of what others have to offer and that we can often achieve more when working in partnership with others. In local government it may seem that sharing is a modern phenomenon. However, local authorities have been working together for several decades, albeit not necessarily under the guise of 'shared services'. For example, the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation was established in 1974 to aggregate the demand of Yorkshire authorities and to centralise purchasing, thereby freeing resources among its constituent authorities and improving purchasing power through economies of scale. Combined waste disposal arrangements have been in place for many years dealing with an ever increasing amount of rubbish and a drive to improve recycling rates.