The London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Brent, Lambeth, Lewisham, Havering and Croydon have employed shared services from Oracle.

The service is expected to save £18 million over four years with implementation complete by June 2013.

The shared services technology will support HR, payroll, procurement and pension services. Mike Suarez, executive director of finance and resources at Lambeth council, said: “platform lends itself enabling us to share things like servers and applications team for supporting software, as well as taking a shared approach to training.”