Small Spinner
What you correctly identify was as a direct result of the 'Smart Procurement' (oxymoron surely) process introduced over a period of time from 1999 onwards. There was nothing smart about it. It encouraged individual PTs to go off and do their own thing (an idea borrowed from industry) in an attempt to find better ways of working. That part was all well and good, quite a few PTs came up with some really good ideas. The problem was that, in order for the other PTs to benefit from the good ideas, they had to talk to each other.
Ah.
The situation was highlighted to me a few years back when a particular ageny, one of the few that remained responsible for centrally managing a particular service to the front line, pointed out that they had found in excess of a dozen contracts, from various PTs, all for the same thing. The suppliers must have been laughing their collective t*ts off.