Commissioning is the process of deciding what public services are needed and how best to use the resources available to get the best for local people. Commissioning is not only about public agencies buying new services by using contracts and grants; it is also about exploring new ways for those public agencies and the service providers to achieve better outcomes.

Over the years Councils, and other purchasers of goods and services like the NHS, have moved from awarding grants to more formal service level agreements and contracts when agreeing with Third Sector organisations to deliver a service.

More recently this process has become more structured as a result of tighter regulation. There is a need to be clearer about what exactly is being purchased and delivered, what the benefits and impacts are, and to see if better value for money can be achieved. The current economic climate means that all aspects of service delivery paid for from public funds are under pressure to deliver the best possible benefits with the resources available.

Procurement and contracts form only one part of commissioning.

What Commissioning involves

• Gathering information and determining what the needs of communities are.
• Getting groups of experts from the various agencies together (including the local authorities, NHS etc. and service providers from the Third Sector) to design the best services possible with the resources available.
• Having a fair and open process of purchasing services (the procurement and contracting bit).
• Managing service delivery, learning from the implementation phase and feeding that back into the design for the next time.

The Commissioning Cycle

The best way of thinking about Commissioning is to think of it as a cycle involving four stages. You can get the idea from the table below: 

The sequence runs from Joint Needs Analysis to Delivery Planning to Procurement and finally to Performance Management. Commissioning is often thought to mean the same as procurement but it is - as you can see - far wider than that.

Commissioning in Leeds

More detail on how the Commissioning Cycle works in practice is given on the Commissioning in Leeds page.