b'or more local authorities may arrange for trading standards services to be provided jointly. Equally two or more authorities may co-operate to obtain the architectural services which they require. One possible way of doing this would be for the authorities to co-operate to establish and finance a body which was separate from them but whose employees could design buildings for them. Each of the authorities could then contract with the body for the design services that it required. The learned Law Lord then outlined how he considered the arrangements in this case fitted the Teckal exemption since the local authorities concerned were not to be regarded as contracting with an outside body when that body delivered insurance services to the owners of that company. The Brent judgment is a welcome boost in times of austerity such as these, for local authorities contemplating collaboration as a method of driving down costs through economies of scale, without the need to incur the time or expense of a procurement process, in circumstances where it is not appropriate to run one. The second area which has been codified in the 2015 Regulations concerns collaborative, horizontal arrangements between contracting authorities. The legislation allows for contracting authorities to enter into contractual shared services arrangements when there is: a co-operative approach to ensuring the delivery of public services that the bodies have to perform are provided with a view to achieving common objectives; the co-operation is governed solely by considerations relating to the public interest; andthe public bodies jointly perform less than 20% of the activities under co-operation on the open market. It must be noted that the Hamburg Waste case law, which preceded the Regulations only allows for cost recovery, ie charging, rather than any element of profit. The legislation does not say this but the recitals to the 2014 Directive suggest that this is still the case. Summary 5.12 With careful thought and some advance planning, charging, commercial trading and/or shared services arrangements properly constituted, may become an ever more popular feature of the public sector landscape. Equally, to set up these arrangements without due care, appropriate advice or adequate attention to the statutory detail could prove problematic for all concerned. The general competence power may assist with some of these issues but it will also be subject to many of the limitations set out in existing legislation governing charging and trading. There is also no sign of the Government adding to the list of public bodies under the 1970 Act despite the change and churn that is going on at present with many existing public bodies.65'