In the drive to increase shared services across local government, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire County Councils have announced an unprecedented partnership with Fujitsu.

The shared service will be the first Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution in local government and will underpin the Councils’ delivery of back office services including HR, finance and procurement.

Cambridgeshire County Council cabinet member for corporate services, Councillor John Reynolds, said: "This new shared service makes good business sense and fits in with the national requirement for the modernisation of local government, to develop ways to improve the performance and further reduce the cost of our back office processes by sharing appropriate services with like minded councils with the support and expertise available from the private sector.”

To develop the service, Fujitsu has invested in an infrastructure that provides services to the councils’ on a managed service basis whilst offering savings over the cost of traditional stand-alone ERP solutions.

Geoff Neville, local and regional government director at Fujitsu Services commented: “This new shared service is a major step forward in the local government sector for two county councils to share a common ERP solution.”