Change in the public procurement in the UK from 24 February 2025
On Monday 24 February 2025, new Procurement Act 2023 rules will take effect changing the rules that shape how public bodies buy goods and services.
The Procurement Act 2023 aims to streamline procurement to benefit prospective suppliers of all sizes, particularly small businesses, start-ups and social enterprises.
What’s changing
The new Act will:
- simplify bidding processes, introducing a competitive flexible procedure
- make commercial frameworks more accessible for suppliers
- remove barriers for smaller businesses, ensuring 30-day payment terms for more public sector contracts
- require public bodies to give consistent feedback and bid assessments for final tenders
New Central Digital Platform
The Act introduces a new central digital platform, an upgrade to Find a Tender, to facilitate public procurement. This platform will simplify supplier contract searches and bids while enabling buyers to meet their transparency obligations.
The central digital platform will be free to use for everyone. There are no charges and you should not pay to view opportunities in the public sector.
If you are already registered on Find a Tender, you will need to re-register and enter your organisation information.
The central digital platform will be launched on Monday 24 February 2025 at 00:01. The URL https://www.gov.uk/find-tender will be the same as the one used to access Find a Tender.
Find a factsheet summarising the key facts about the central digital platform.
eTendersNI- In Northern Ireland, many authorities use eTendersNI for their tendering processes. ETendersNI has issued guidance about changes to its system.
The guidance has highlighted four main areas to note:
- Tenders published before Friday 24 February 2025 will still follow the current system.
- The new notice regime and format under the Act will apply to any competitions commenced after 24 February 2025.
- Authorities may change some processes based on a new law. This includes asking different eligibility questions and allowing multiple cycles of tendering and evaluation.
- Suppliers will need to provide identifiers from the new digital platform for tenders over a certain amount to help eTendersNI retrieve important information.
For more details, see the Summary of eTendersNI changes to accommodate the Procurement Act 2023.
How to prepare your business
It is important to prepare for the new regulations. You should:
- review all current and planned commercial opportunities
- ensure that your standard operating procedures and policies are robust for the new regime
- review documents that your teams and suppliers use and ensure they are current
- consider the readiness of your organisation’s systems and what changes may be needed
- ensure your people understand Transforming Public Procurement and undertake the necessary training
More information
For more information on how public procurement will change how supplies, services and works are procured for the public sector refer to Transforming Public Procurement.
A recording of the Government Commercial Function (GFC) webinar for suppliers is also available – watch How to get ready for 24 February 2025.
Go-2-Tender is an award winning InterTradeIreland programme that was developed to give SMEs the confidence, knowledge and practical skills to tender successfully for public sector contracts in their own jurisdiction and on a cross-border basis. This new programme is geared towards SMEs who want to improve their basic tendering skills to increase their success rates in public sector tenders.
In 2023, the national electronic tendering website eTenders, switched to a new service provider. To enable ongoing access to past procurement competition data that was hosted on the old website public buyers and suppliers have been able to access the old) eTenders website. This is changing soon, and access to the old website is ceasing in May 2024.
