Decommissioning toolkit What we mean by ‘decommissioning’

This page is part of our decommissioning toolkit.

Definitions of decommissioning vary but the majority describe it as involving:

a change in the provision of a service

This may mean stopping a service or a significant part of it. It can also include terminating or re-negotiating a contract or grant with an existing service provider, where this is driven by commissioning needs, including reduced budgets.

an improvement to existing service provision

Existing provision may end to:

make space for a new and improved service;
enable innovation in service provision;
provide better value for money, perhaps through more effective achievement of the desired outcomes or more efficient delivery; or
better fit the level of provision to demand.

For the purposes of this guidance, we have adopted the following definition, which should be read in conjunction with the above:

‘Decommissioning is stopping provision of a service or a significant part of a service in order to bring about an improvement to existing service provision.’

Decommissioning is a facet of commissioning – to be effective it needs to be embedded in your existing approach to commissioning and take a strategic and holistic commissioning approach. Like commissioning, it can be thought of as cyclical as in the figure below.