Supplier Guidance to the Procurement Act 2023
The Procurement Act 2023 was made law on 27th October 2023, the biggest changes to UK public procurement since 2015. The act is due to go live in October 2024 following the completion of the secondary legislation (regulations) and a 6 month notice period.
Within the Procurement Act 2023 there are some key changes that we would like to draw your attention to:
- Increase to procurement transparency
- A more transparent and inclusive procurement process will be established, including pipeline and tender notices for opportunities over certain thresholds on centralised platforms.
- Buyers will be required to publish notices to Contracts Finder (or equivalent) when a contract is modified and/or terminated.
- KPI’s measured and reported on in the public domain for contracts over £5m.
- Public debarment list
- Suppliers who have committed an ‘excludable offence’ will be prevented from bidding for future work. Eg. bribery, corruption, conspiracy, and fraud
- Suppliers performing badly on contracts and don’t rectify the issue, will also be at risk of exclusion from future procurements, by being added to the list.
- Exchanging ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender’ (MEAT) with ‘Most Advantageous Tender’ (MAT)
- High weightings on price may reduce by shifting the higher weighting to the technical and social value criteria.
- New routes to market
- Creation of longer ‘open frameworks’, allowing the re-opening to new suppliers every so often.
- New ‘Dynamic Markets’, similar to the Dynamic Purchasing Systems except these will allow the inclusion of complex services, as well as the commodity goods and services.
Please note: Existing legislation will apply to any procurements started under the old rules.
Further guidance provided by the Government Commercial Function can be found in the links below.
The Procurement Act 2023: A short guide for suppliers (HTML) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)