Richmond upon Thames, Merton, Croydon, Sutton and Kingston upon Thames have signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding' which they say will lead the way to co-operation between the local authorities and shared services.
Richmond has already merged its legal department with Merton, to save £100,000 from its budget, and is to look at joining up its children's services with Kingston.
Mandy Skinner, assistant director of commissioning, corporate policy and strategy at Richmond council, said, 'With sharing legal services the numbers of staff involved is relatively small, but with children's services we are talking about the whole range - absolutely everything - and that requires a lot of consideration.'
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