Cabinet Office Guidance: Accessing public sector contracts if there’s no Brexit deal – new UK e-notification portal

On 13^th September 2018, the Cabinet Office published guidance on how UK public sector contract opportunities will be advertised from the end of March 2019 in the event that there is no Brexit deal.

The guidance confirms that before 29 March 2019 contract opportunities falling within the scope of the EU procurement directives must be advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) via Tenders Electronic Daily (TED). In practice this is often done via third party portal providers.  Procurement opportunities for below threshold contracts are advertised on domestic portals such as Contracts Finder. Although not mentioned in the guidance, the obligations to advertise on Contracts Finder will continue to apply to above threshold contracts, in accordance with the requirements of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

The guidance goes on to outline the position after March 2019, if there is no deal in place regarding future arrangements on access to the OJEU/TED. In this case, all contract opportunities currently published on OJEU/TED would be published on a new UK e-notification service. Publication would take place electronically and the service will be free for all users.  The requirement to publish on domestic portals would remain.

The guidance confirms that there will be further communication and guidance on how to deal with ongoing procurement procedures between the two systems nearer to the time

 The full text of the guidance is available here.