UK Procurement Act FAQs

The new Procurement Act will benefit suppliers of all sizes, particularly start-ups, scale-ups and small businesses. It will create a central digital platform for suppliers to register and store their details so that they can be used for multiple bids, and see all opportunities in one place.

The Procurement Act 2023 increases the obligations on contracting authorities to publish notices linked to a wide range of events during the lifecycle of a procurement and the resulting contract.

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Proactis has supported the practice of strategic procurement for over 25 years, and our solutions have enabled customer's processes to efficiently comply with Public Sector requirements throughout this time. We already have the technology in place to satisfy many of the requirements of the Act. Our Sourcing, SRM, Contract Management, P2P and eInvoicing solutions enable you to control spend and manage supply-chain risk - all through process digitisation and automation.

As the first choice for contracting authorities in the UK, the Proactis digital platform encompasses many features and functions that are already in line with the requirements of The Procurement Act 2023, including:

• Flexible and configurable procedure workflow.
• Connectivity to publish notices.
• Flexible qualitative evaluation.
• Inherent supplier risk management capability.
• ESG supplier due diligence.
• Streamlined digital interaction with suppliers and stakeholders.
• Overall data visibility and transparency.

Proactis is working closely with the Cabinet Office to ensure our tools enable authorities to remain compliant with regulations, including new notice requirements.

Some of the key ways in which Proactis already supports these requirements can be found in the Our Products Section.

We are working on our solutions, in line with updates from the Cabinet Office, to ensure there is a smooth transition for you.

We are actively updating ProContract, Source-to-Contract and MyTenders solutions to enable you to meet the requirements of the regulations when our technology is combined with your processes.

Buyers will need to register on the CDP for a Buyer Key, allowing their organisation to publish notices through the updated Find a Tender portal. Once Buyers have their Key, this will need to be entered into ProContract, Source-to-Contract or myTenders by your organisation administrator, allowing for the publication of notices using these platforms.

A phased approach was being used by the Cabinet Office for CDP Beta testing, with contracting authorities being invited to participate in stages. Contracting authorities can expect the Cabinet Office to grant them full access on 24 February 2025.

Proactis has also been granted access to CDP Beta testing, allowing us to finalise testing of our integration solution (API) for buyers. 

A number of changes are being introduced in line with the regulations covered by the Procurement Act 2023. These include the introduction of new notice types*, changes to procurement processed and introduction of the CDP (Central Digital Portal).

Proactis is working in conjunction with the UK government in order to update its product and allow our users to be compliant with the upcoming regulations. 

*Notice types:

• UK2 Preliminary market engagement notice
• UK3 Planned procurement notice
• UK4 Tender notice
• UK5 Transparency notice
• UK6 Contract award notice
• UK7 Contract details notice
• UK10 Contract change notice
• UK11 Contract termination notice
• UK12 Procurement termination notice
• UK13-16 dynamic markets notice types

The UK 1 Pipeline Notice is not part of our go live notices due to technical schemas not being made ready by the Cabinet Office. We are continuing to work on understanding this additional notice with the Cabinet Office.

Senior leaders can support the process by encouraging:

• a named individual in their organisation to take responsibility for co-ordinating and championing the change, including within their wider organisational family where appropriate,
• early engagement by policy with commercial teams - this is key to delivering innovation and getting the most from the market,
• use of the new flexibilities in procurement and champion this change across government and wider public sector - in order for this reform to be effective, we need to drive behavioural change,
• Commercial teams should take time to review release notes, take advantage of the User Familiarisation Environment (UFE) and ensure their procedures and work instructions are updated to reflect the system changes.

The Procurement Act has the potential to make a huge difference, and your engagement is essential to the outcomes we all want to see. Make sure your organisation is ready to grasp the opportunity.

Are you prepared? 

As the first choice for contracting authorities in the UK, the Proactis digital platform encompasses many features and functions that are already in line with the requirements of The Procurement Act 2023. We are working closely with the Cabinet Office to ensure our tools enable authorities to remain compliant with regulations, including new notice requirements.

Ahead of the final details, you can access some of the key ways in which Proactis already supports these requirements here.
 

We are aware of the requirement for existing live procurements, including DPSs, to continue with existing notice types during the transition period. We intend to support this while allowing new procurement journeys that begin after 24 February 2025 to utilise the new notice forms.

Every public authority will need to be registered with CDP in order to be able to publish notices through CDP or an eSender like Proactis. The Cabinet Office will open the registration in due course, and have discussed a phased approach from January, and you will be required to obtain your registration number ahead of your notice publications to CDP. Buyers should plan to gain access on 24 February 2025.

We have developed a short online course focusing on the UK Procurement Act and its implications for ProContract and Source-to-Contract users. The courses highlight the numerous features and functions relevant to public sector buyers, and offers an overview of developments made to comply with the new requirements of the Act.

We recommend completing the relevant 1-hour online course before using the new features and functions. 

This course is available for FREE to Proactis customers through the new Proactis Training Academy.

Please contact your Account Manager to arrange access.

Buying organisations will be expected to update their profile with their new organisation details for the Central Digital Platform.

Due to our attempt to minimise the risk of enhancements, and some functionality not likely to be ready in time by the Cabinet Office in time for October, we have decided to initially implement a light touch solution where suppliers upload their exports from the CDP where responding to Tenders.  Validation on the Central Digital Platform side of things will initially mostly be Optional.  This will be reviewed and we’ll discuss improvements with our customers after February 2025.

CPD Linking
Buyers will need to register on the CDP for a Buyer Key, allowing their organisation to publish notices. Once Buyers have their Key, this can be stored within our portals, allowing for the publication of notices via ProContract, Source  to Contract & myTenders. Information about the process of Buyers registering on the CDP, will be made available from the Cabinet Office – we cannot, however, confirm when.

We are working closely with the Cabinet Office and addressing any concerns and issues as they arise in the following detail:

RISKS:
As with all big projects, there can be unexpected delays and issues. Our regular newsletters highlight some of our recent challenges, and how we tackled them. 

For transparency, we are in a position to share the following ongoing risks to the successful implementation of the Procurement Act 2023: 

The Cabinet Office is still developing some of the technical elements of the Central Digital Planform up until Go-Live.
Mitigation: We are aware of the gap and will ensure we respond quickly if these impact what we have developed.

We have been told that Suppliers will be able to register on the 24 February.
Accept: This is outside our control and influence. Our concerns have been raised to the Cabinet Office, but this has not resulted in changes to their plans. We have been told they are working on a Supplier communication strategy which we hope to get sight of in the next couple of weeks. We hope this will reduce risks around supplier registration, however we have limited influence over this.

We have currently no exact details on when Buyers and eSenders will be provided with, or allowed to sign up for, their registration details for Central Digital Platform.
Mitigation: We have communicated this to the Cabinet Office and continue to press for some clarity, however, as with the Supplier registration this is outside our control.

Please also note that a phased approach was being used by the Cabinet Office for CDP Beta testing, with contracting authorities being invited to participate in stages. Contracting authorities can expect the Cabinet Office to grant them full access on 24 February 2025.

If these risks, or any other challenges, have a high probability of creating issues for our customers - we will ensure appropriate communications are issued. 

We are actively updating ProContract, introducing new functionality and features, so you can meet the requirements of the regulations when our technology is combined with your processes. Further details of the changes are available here.

We have a number of short online courses available which take deeper a look at the UK Procurement Act and its implications for users. Each course highlights the numerous features and functions that already comply with the Act's requirements and offer an overview of the anticipated changes for users. Details of these courses are available via the Proactis Training Academy.

We are have a deployment schedule in place, and our UAT and UFE environments currently allow customers to review all the changes that are being made available for go-live. Further details are available through our Product pages.

The CDP (Central Digital Platform) will replace the requirement for an in solution (SQ) Standard Questionnaire/ (SPD) Single Procurment Docuemnt from 24 February 2025.  As such we will be moving away from the current centralised SQ/SPD in due course.

If the CDP is required to consider the CAS questions to be mandated, then this should be queried through the Cabinet Office.

Of course, Proactis customers will still have the option to create a specific CAS questionnaire for use by their organisation themselves.

Proactis is working on supplier guides to support raising awareness of the CDP, and will make these available in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we have provided suppliers with the following message:

The UK's Procurement Act 2023 comes into force from Monday 24 February 2025, which will introduce new processes and notice types - changing how you bid for tenders.

The UK government has prepared some useful resources about these changes:  

• 3-min summary of all changes  
• Indepth video overviews  
• Guidance documents

Further information about these changes will be made available prior to 24 February 2025.

We are actively updating myTenders, introducing new functionality and features, so you can meet the requirements of the regulations when our technology is combined with your processes. You can see more here. 

The central digital platform referenced in this guidance comprises an enhanced version of Find a Tender (FTS), providing the new procurement notices - Ref https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents.

For the purpose of ProContract we will continue to publish notices to the FTS site come February but in the new 2024 "UK" format.  We intend to provide all notices from UK1 to UK17 within ProContract however as of October UK1, UK8, UK9 & UK17 will not live within the FTS site.  We recommend our customers review this site for additional information, in particular the Knolwedge drops and Learning & Development Brochure.

The UK1 Pipeline Notice is not part of our go live notices due to technical schemas not being made ready by the Cabinet Office. We are continuing to work on understanding this additional notice with the Cabinet Office.

No, there is no additional work expected from you, other than publishing the appropriate notices for your procurement. On launch, suppliers will be required to register on the CDP, then complete and download their standard responses as a file extract. They will then be required to upload this as an attachment when bidding for any work with your organisation. Following the launch of the act, we will review the submission journey with customers, once all APIs have been made available.
 

No workflows created in the test system will be transferred onto the live system. We are making the live system available as early as possible to allow customer time to set up their workflows for PA2023. 

Workflows and events that customers have in their live system will remain there until the customers decide to remove them. When building new events they will be presented with the additional external events that will allow them to select the appropriate UK series notice.