This sounds really parochial, but it could be the start of something big. The Borough Council in Swindon, west of London on Brunel's famous rail line, is set to become the first local authority to outsource its service management to another. The Council will pay £3.6 million to Kent County Council in a three-year deal to improve the effectiveness of its zero-star social services department.

One of the problems in local government, and the reason why Britain's Council Tax is so high, is that they too often insist on doing everything themselves. You have four or five little places all running useless and inefficient payroll systems, for example, when they really ought to capture the benefits of scale and just get one of their number - or an outside contractor - to run it for all of them. But officials fear it is shameful to acknowledge that some other council might be better at running things than they are.

So this is a welcome trend. Let's hope that efficient local authorities will market their services to others; and that inefficient authorities will be brave enough to buy in their help. Then some of our most dire public services might just be improved.