Our new Society Of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) policy network comes at a time when – so it seems – many councils and some national organisations (Local Partnerships and the Department for Communities and Local Government, to name but two) are reviewing approaches to commissioning.

Like an exercise in runic divination, many people will be peering into the records of past practices to identify what, if anything, has been useful in well over a decade of commissioning activity.

What we need is an honest reflection on whether commissioning has really led to any fundamental change and, if not, how to change that. What we don’t need are more turgid debates about the definition of the word.