The Procurement Act 2023: Now due to take effect 24 February 2025

The Cabinet Office has now announced that the Procurement Act 2023 will not come into effect until 24 February 2025, having been delayed to allow the new government to re-consider and update the National Procurement Policy Statement to best reflect its priorities. This extra four months mean that authorities helpfully have some more time to ready themselves for the biggest shake-up to public procurement which most of us can remember.  

Where can I find all of the resources I need? 

There are five key pieces of legislation and guidance which practitioners need to have at their finger-tips.  

The Government Commercial Function has a landing page which is a good resource for the relevant materials.   

Transforming Public Procurement - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

To save you having to look up the relevant pieces of legislation and guidance separately, we have included links to each below.  

The Procurement Act 2023: This is the primary legislation which has received Royal Assent and which is currently due to come into force on 28 October 2024.  

Procurement Act 2023 (legislation.gov.uk)

The Procurement Regulations 2024: These are the secondary legislation which merged two different Statutory Instruments into one.  The Regulations contain the CPV codes and the contents of what has to go into notices.  

The Procurement Regulations 2024 (legislation.gov.uk)

The Transitional Provisions: These are the rules which govern what happens to procurements already “commenced” before 28 October 2024 and other transitional provisions.  If there is any delay to Go-Live, these will need amending.  

The Procurement Act 2023 (Commencement No. 3 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2024 

The Technical Guidance: Government Commercial Function has been releasing Technical Guidance in batches.  This is important as it will aid interpretation of the Act.  

Procurement Act 2023 - Guidance documents - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Learning Manual: This is a 667 page document (we recommend printing 4 pages per sheet, double-sided if you are printing!) condensing further guidance and examples, some of which will be familiar to those of you who have completed the on-line TPP certification course.  

Transforming Public Procurement Learning Manual - Summary Documents and Learning Aids (publishing.service.gov.uk)

What should authorities be doing to prepare? 

Many of you will of course have undertaken the TPP course training, potentially even the deeper dives for procurement professionals, and looked at your organisation’s readiness for the Act. One of the biggest challenges will be the requirements for notices, and this goes hand in hand with the readiness of the Central Digital Platform. The original vision was that all suppliers and authorities would be registered on the Platform by Go-Live date. Given the level of detail that needs to be entered, the sooner the Platform is ready the better, and it is of course possible that another reason for the delay to the Act was the fact that the Platform is so far as we understand still in development.  

Finally, we are now expecting an updated National Procurement Policy Statement to replace the one that was published in May. This means that policies and templates may need to be updated again once the updated statement comes through.

What can be done in-house to hit the ground running on Go-Live?

As has always been the case, procurements will benefit from adequate planning. This is all the more important under the Act as authorities will need to think carefully about what they really want out of a contract before they launch the procurement for it. This is because:

• For contracts over £5million (other than LTR contracts, frameworks, utilities contracts awarded by a private utility, concession contracts and contracts where performance cannot be assessed with reference to KPIs) the authority will need to set KPIs and monitor performance against them. 
• Suppliers may well resist accepting onerous contractual terms because of the increased contract performance monitoring.
• Where poor performance and/or breach of contract could lead to exclusion and potentially even debarment, suppliers will be scrutinising T&Cs early in the procurement.  

Early consideration of what the authority really wants to drive out of the contract will therefore be very important.  

Noticing requirements will place a much greater administrative burden on authorities, who will want to ensure that they have the adequate in-house resource to deal with this.  

Given the flexibility of the new Competitive Flexible Procedure, there are opportunities for authorities to achieve their objectives through appropriate procurement design, but early engagement with stakeholders will be critical so that those responsible for the design achieve the commissioning intentions within the constraints of what is permitted under the new Competitive Flexible Procedure. 

How can we help?

We have produced Talking Heads videos which are free to access on the topics in the Procurement Act. We have produced a Work Book, available for purchase, which helps you navigate through the details of the Act.  We are also shortly launching new training series and On Demand resource, and will be sending out details of this paid for subscription service soon.  

If you feel you would benefit from further training or resources, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.