The Procurement Reform Act 2023

With the procurement reform act now due to commerce on 24 February 2025, we wanted to share some key points and thoughts from a recent Cabinet Office webinar. 

Overall, in relation to plans for transition, there were no surprises and the transition to the new rules will be exactly as you'd imagine.

Timings and rules

- If your procurement starts before 24 February 2025, then the old PCR 2015 (Public Contract Regulations) applies.

- If your procurement starts after 24 February 2025, you will be following the new Procurement Act 2023 regime. 

Call offs from frameworks will continue to operate in line with the rules that the framework was set up within.

This means if a framework is established in January 2025 and you have a call off in August 2027, the current (old) PCR 2015 rules will apply to that call off process. Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS) continued maintenance and call off and set up works the same way too. 

The trigger as to which rules will apply to your procurement from the 24 February 2025 is the competition notice, NOT a prior information notice (in either new or old formats). 

For example, if you issue a PIN in January 2025 but do not publish a subsequent tender notice until April 2025, then it seems the new Procurement Act 2023 is going to apply to your procurement regardless of the previously issued PIN. 

Procurements close to the February deadline 

The Cabinet Office also presented several scenarios which included one where a procurement designed for the PCR (due to no fault of the contracting authorities) is accidentally published after the transition date – the answer was as you might imagine, it would be non-compliant. 

The bottom line is that public sector buyers should actively avoid publication of tenders close to the February deadline, using the PCR templates or else risk all the work needing to be redeveloped if development time-frames slip, as they are wont to do. Do not get caught out. 

Instead, if it is looking likely that your procurement might come close to the February deadline, it may be sensible that you prepare your procurement under the new regime and publish the same on or after the 24 February 2025. Plan accordingly. 

As well as this, there were two extremely important updates that must be highlighted. 

Dynamic Purchasing Systems

All DPS must cease their use by 23 February 2029 and the Cabinet Office are encouraging contracting authorities to ‘terminate’ them by this date at the latest. 

It appears to be completely irrelevant what the expiry date might currently be for your DPS – DPS as a compliant route to market will end by this date at the latest. 

Whether establishing a DPS now is suitable for your needs will be entirely subject to the end goal, but if you are proceeding with a new DPS, it is advisable that you ensure it expires by the 23 February 2029  and also that you undertake a review of any other DPS’s that may become non-viable as a procurement route as a result of this decision, including making decisions as to whether the terms of your DPS need to be amended to ensure they can end on the appropriate date.  

For pseudo DPS like YPO’s apprenticeship framework, procured under light touch- the rules are unclear, and Cabinet Office didn’t have an answer at the time as to whether same rules will apply. We will no doubt find out more soon. 

For those DPS affected, it may not be strictly necessary to vary the terms, but it is suggested that you contact your supply chains in good time and state your intention to cease use of affected DPS earlier than planned, if it is not otherwise fully terminated. 

Specific details relating to this are also included in the Transitional Guidance update– which is available here. 

I have found this to be easily missed if you’re struggling to keep up with the number of communications and training requirements at present, so it is worth highlighting again. 

There is also now available a wealth of guidance documents published on the Gov.uk website to help suppliers and buyers with the technical guidance, interpretation and understanding of the Procurement Act. 

Frameworks 

What about longer than four year frameworks? Do the same rules apply to frameworks under PCR that exceed February 2029? It appears not. 

Frameworks unlike DPS are categorised as contracts, which will continue to use the rules they are set up under, until they expire. PCR Frameworks can therefore naturally expire as planned or be terminated in accordance with their terms as may be necessary. 

The future of Contracts Finder 

In the Q&A session, I noticed one question and answer that looked to fly under the radar there was a clear indication that Contracts Finder will also be closing, leaving ‘Find a Tender’ as the available portal for the publication of all notices. 

Although the move makes practical sense, there has been no news or guidance up to this point that this was the case, with all previous questions indicating that we shall wait and see.  

This may ultimately mean in terms of transparency that smaller contract award notices for regulated under threshold spend could be swallowed by the vast number of other public notices going through a single public portal but the likelihood of this may depend on a users ability to search for notices by category in the future.  

I still applaud the decision to retain one system. For myself, it just never made sense to retain the two as Contracts Finder only ever existed to split out UK only opportunities from the rest of the EU, which seems unnecessary now. 

Key takeaways 

Overall, the recent Super User event was the most useful yet for detail around the new act and the chat was lively and productive- as a summary, please remember: 

• Procurement issued before 24 February 2025– use PCR15, procurement after February, use PA23 

• Call-offs derive their compliance from whichever rules apply to the framework or DPS 

• All DPS to end by 23 February 2029

• Contracts Finder looks to be closing down as some point in the future 

I hope this has been useful. Please visit our Procurement Reform webpage to stay up to date with the latest developments.