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.