Changes to public procurement regulations

If your business supplies goods, works or services to organisations in the public and utility sectors, or hopes to do so, you need to know about the changes.

The new Procurement Act will benefit suppliers of all sizes, particularly start-ups, scale-ups and small businesses.

We expect the new regime to go live in February 2025. The existing rules will continue to apply for contracts that are already in progress, so the changes won’t happen overnight.

The Transforming Public Procurement programme aims to improve the way public procurement is regulated in order to:

create a simpler, more flexible, commercial system that better meets our country’s needs while complying with our international obligations.
open up public procurement to new entrants such as small businesses and social enterprises so that they can compete for and win more public contracts.
embed transparency throughout the commercial lifecycle so that the spending of taxpayers’ money can be properly scrutinised.

The Procurement Bill, which will reform the existing Procurement Rules, has now received Royal Assent. You can view the new Procurement Act on the UK legislation website, and the official record of the Bill’s progress through Parliament, with all supporting documents on the Parliamentary website.

Please note this guidance has been provided by Lancashire County Council as an overview of the current situation in relation to the implementation of the Procurement Act. Suppliers must access the resources available on the www.gov.uk webpage and keep up to date with the Transforming Public Procurement programme.

Transforming Public Procurement (www.gov.uk)

Supplier knowledge drops

The official transforming public procurement knowledge drops (www.gov.uk)

Knowledge drops are designed to provide an overview of the Procurement Act 2024 for different audiences. Please see The Official Transforming Public Procurement Knowledge Drops (www.gov.uk). Please access the knowledge drops for either:

suppliers who deliver contracts to the UK public, utilities and defence sectors
small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and voluntary, community and social enterprises (VCSEs)

Further information

The Transforming Public Procurement landing page provides further information about the new regime and the L&D, guidance and support that Cabinet Office is providing. See Transforming Public Procurement (www.gov.uk). We have been informed that there will likely be further supplier support to be published which may include a learning manual.

Supplier selection

There are a number of changes in relation to supplier selection including the introduction of the Central Digital Platform and the Debarment List which are summarised below.

Central Digital Platform (CDP) - Supplier Information System

The central digital platform includes a new Supplier Information System that enables suppliers to register and provide their basic supplier information for procurements in one single place. Registration is free of charge and data is held and stored privately.

When a supplier registers on the platform, their information will be validated and a unique identifier assigned to them.

Contracting authorities are required to access a supplier’s information from the central digital platform whenever a supplier applies for any above-threshold procurement. Suppliers are responsible for the accuracy of their data, and for keeping it up to date for every new procurement. Suppliers that fail to submit accurate information may be excluded.

The contracting authority may require confirmation from the supplier before awarding a contract, that:

the supplier has registered on the central digital platform,
the supplier has submitted any updated or corrected supplier information about itself and connected persons to the central digital platform.
the supplier has shared any updated or corrected supplier information with the contracting authority, this may be via the submission of their unique identifier from the CDP.

What you need to do

Central Digital Platform Factsheet (www.gov.uk)
The Procurement Act 2023 (www.gov.uk)

Suppliers are advised to ensure that they are registered on the central digital platform, and submit their core business information as soon as possible as the authority (Lancashire County Council) may require the information from the CDP as part of the tender submission, including but not limited to where the procurement is above threshold. Please see the Procurement Act 2023, Schedule 1, for further information in relation to Threshold Amounts.

The authority is likely to require suppliers to submit their unique identifier from the CDP within their tender submission to allow the authority to access their information.

Where a supplier has not submitted the required information on the CDP by the stated deadline, where this is a requirement, they may be rejected from the procurement process.

The Supplier Information System is expected to hold the following information in relation to Suppliers:

Basic supplier information (e.g.name, address, contract details, etc.)
Exclusion grounds
Some economic and financial standing information, such as audited accounts
Details of connected persons and beneficial ownership.

Please see the tender documents for specific requirements for each procurement.

It is expected that prior to the launch of the CDP platform a new technical helpdesk for contracting authorities and suppliers will be created.

It is anticipated that the following will be ready for use by September 2024:

Sign-in and Registration (which includes identifiers) - To allow Suppliers and Contracting Authorities to register their organisation and receive an organisational identifier which will be used throughout the procurement lifecycle.
Supplier Information - To allow suppliers to deposit their organisational information such that they are ready to send to contracting authorities as part of the bid process.

Please note: The timescales for access to the CDP have not yet been confirmed however suppliers are asked to keep up to date with the updates on the Transforming Public Procurement webpage (link above).

Conditions of Participation

The authority may include additional Conditions of Participation for individual procurements, which will be set out in the tender documents. This may include information relating to conditions on a supplier’s legal and financial capacity, and technical ability, to perform the contract.

Debarment list

The debarment list is a published list of excluded (where a mandatory exclusion ground applies) or excludable (where a discretionary exclusion ground applies) suppliers that, following an investigation, a Minister of the Crown has made the decision to add their name to the debarment list.

The decision to add a supplier to the list would be because the investigation found them to be unfit or potentially unfit to tender and be awarded public contracts because a mandatory or discretionary ground for exclusion applies and the circumstances giving rise to that ground are continuing or likely to occur again (taking account of self-cleaning undertaken by the supplier and other relevant factors).

The debarment list may be published on GOV.UK.

Who is in scope to be on the debarment list

Any supplier or potential supplier can be investigated and added to the debarment list, including:

Public and private limited companies
Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)
Individuals acting as sole traders
Suppliers from outside the United Kingdom
Sub-contractors
Suppliers which are themselves contracting authorities
Suppliers which are not currently delivering or have never delivered a public contract.

Excluding suppliers

Contracting authorities must exclude suppliers which are on the debarment list from all covered procurements where the exclusion ground is mandatory (or for the particular type of procurement listed where the mandatory national security ground applies). They will have discretion on whether or not to exclude a supplier if the exclusion ground is discretionary.