The Procurement Act 2023: What It Means for Suppliers

What Is the Procurement Act 2023?

The Procurement Act 2023 is the new legal framework governing how UK public bodies buy goods, works and services. It came into force on 24 February 2025 and replaced a patchwork of older rules — most importantly the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Its stated aims are to make procurement simpler, more transparent, more open to small and medium-sized suppliers, and better at delivering value for money and social value. For suppliers, the headline is this: less duplicated paperwork, more visibility of upcoming opportunities, and higher expectations on transparency.

The Central Digital Platform: Register Once

The single biggest practical change is the Central Digital Platform. Instead of re-entering your company details, accounts, certifications and exclusion declarations into a different portal for every buyer, you register your core supplier information once and reuse it across every bid. The platform also hosts all published procurement notices, so live opportunities and awarded contracts are searchable in one place. Registering — and keeping your information current — is now the foundation of bidding under the Act.

New and Simpler Procurement Procedures

The Act streamlines the routes to market. The rigid procedures under the old rules are largely replaced by two main options:

• Open procedure — a single-stage process where any supplier can respond. Best for straightforward, well-defined requirements
• Competitive flexible procedure — buyers design their own multi-stage process to suit the contract, allowing dialogue, negotiation and innovation for complex needs
• Frameworks and dynamic markets — frameworks continue, and Dynamic Purchasing Systems are replaced by more flexible "dynamic markets" that suppliers can join at any time

The practical effect is more variety in how tenders are run, so reading each notice carefully — and understanding the specific process a buyer has chosen — matters more than ever.

More Transparency, More Notices

The Act introduces a wider set of published notices across the whole contract lifecycle. The ones that matter most to suppliers are the early ones: pipeline notices (contracting authorities with significant spend must publish planned procurements ahead of time) and preliminary market engagement notices (signalling that a buyer is exploring the market). Together they give you earlier warning of upcoming work — time to prepare evidence, build relationships and start drafting before the tender lands. Later in the lifecycle, buyers publish more about award decisions, contract details and, for large contracts, ongoing performance against KPIs.

Assessment: From MEAT to MAT

Bids used to be assessed on the "most economically advantageous tender" (MEAT). The Act reframes this as the "most advantageous tender" (MAT). The wording change is small but the intent is clear: buyers are encouraged to weight wider factors — quality, social value, innovation and resilience — rather than defaulting to lowest price. In practice, winning still comes down to the same discipline: answer the published award criteria directly, evidence every claim, and map your response to how each question is marked.

The Debarment Register and Exclusions

The Act creates a central, published debarment register — a list of suppliers excluded from public procurement for serious misconduct such as fraud or significant poor performance. Buyers must check it. For well-run suppliers this changes little day to day, but it does raise the stakes on the exclusion declarations you make when you register on the Central Digital Platform: they need to be accurate and kept up to date.

A Better Deal for SMEs

Opening up public contracts to smaller suppliers is an explicit goal of the Act. Contracting authorities must have regard to removing barriers for SMEs. 30-day payment terms now flow down through the supply chain, and prompt-payment performance is published — useful leverage if you subcontract to a prime. Combined with earlier visibility from pipeline notices, this makes it more realistic for a small or first-time bidder to compete, provided they are set up to respond quickly and to a high standard.

What Suppliers Should Do Now

• Register on the Central Digital Platform and keep your company information, accounts and certifications current
• Watch pipeline and preliminary market engagement notices for your sectors — the earliest signal of upcoming work
• Get onto the right frameworks and dynamic markets, which remain one of the highest-return routes to public sector revenue
• Keep a strong bid library and evidence base ready so you can respond fast and to a high standard when a tender opens
• Write every response directly to the published award criteria — under MAT, quality and social value carry real weight

BidWriter is built for exactly this: it matches you to live opportunities across UK public sector, drafts responses from your company profile against the marking scheme, scores them before you submit, and keeps your whole pipeline in one place. Try BidWriter free — no card needed — and turn the new, more open procurement landscape into more wins.

Frequently asked questions