What changed when the Procurement Act 2023 replaced PCR 2015

The Procurement Act 2023 went live in February 2025. Most of the coverage was written for lawyers. This is the version that matters if you are a care provider filling in a portal at half past ten on a Tuesday night.

The rulebook you are under depends on when the procurement started

This is the first thing to check and the one providers most often get wrong. A procurement that began before the Act commenced continues under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 until it finishes. Frameworks awarded under PCR 2015 keep running under PCR 2015 for their whole term, including call-offs.

So in any given month you may be working on two bids under two different regimes. The contract notice tells you which. Read it before you read anything else.

Award letters became assessment summaries

Under PCR 2015 you received a Regulation 86 letter. It told you that you had won or lost, and gave you the characteristics and relative advantages of the winning tender, usually in a form vague enough to be useless.

Section 50 of the Act replaces this with an assessment summary. It sets out the score awarded against each criterion and the reasons for that score, for your submission specifically.

This is a genuine improvement and almost nobody exploits it. An assessment summary tells you which answer scored three when you thought it was a five, and why. That is a free diagnostic on your own writing, and it applies directly to the next bid.

Standstill is eight working days, where there is one

Eight working days can be longer than ten calendar days once a bank holiday lands in it. It can also be shorter. If you are considering a challenge, count the days properly rather than assuming. And check there is a standstill at all: most care contracts are light touch, and those are exempt. More on that below.

Exclusions moved to a central list

The Act introduced a published debarment list. Suppliers excluded for serious misconduct appear on it, and contracting authorities must check.

For most care providers this changes nothing. What does change is that the exclusion grounds themselves were restated and slightly widened, and the self-cleaning provisions are now more explicit. If your organisation has anything in its history that might trigger a discretionary ground, the Act gives you a clearer route to explain what you did about it. Take that route. Saying nothing and hoping is how a bid dies at selection stage.

Light touch still applies to care, with fewer rules

Most social care procurement runs under the light touch rules, which give authorities more flexibility over process. That has not gone away. What it means in practice is that two councils buying the same service can run very different processes, both lawfully.

Do not assume the shape of the last framework you bid for. Read the instructions to tenderers each time.

Check whether there is a standstill at all

The eight working day standstill is not mandatory for every contract. Light touch contracts are exempt. The buyer must still publish a contract award notice, and it can choose to apply a voluntary standstill. If it does, that standstill must be at least eight working days.

So when an award notice arrives on a care contract, look in it for a standstill end date. If there is none, the contract can be signed straight away, and there may be no window to raise concerns before it is. Raise questions during the procurement, not after the result.

Call-off contracts under frameworks and contracts awarded under dynamic markets are also exempt from mandatory standstill.

Other light touch differences

• Published KPIs. Contracts worth more than £5 million must have at least three key performance indicators (KPIs), which the buyer publishes. Light touch contracts are exempt from that rule. Your contract will still have performance measures. They are simply not published under it.
• User choice contracts. The Act allows a direct award for services to a particular person, where the buyer must consider that person's or their carer's preferences about who provides them. It applies where a preference has been expressed, or only one supplier can provide the service, and competition would not be in the person's best interests.

Register once on the Central Digital Platform

Under the Act, your core supplier information sits on the Central Digital Platform, part of Find a Tender. It is free to use, and buyers must check you are registered, usually before the tendering period ends. It holds four things:

• basic information, such as your name, address, Companies House or charity number and VAT number;
• your accounts for the most recent financial years;
• connected persons, such as directors and parent companies;
• any mandatory or discretionary exclusion grounds that apply to you or your connected persons.

You generate a share code and enter it in the buyer's e-tendering portal. The buyer then adds questions specific to the procurement, for example using the government's Procurement Specific Questionnaire template. Our guide to SQ, PSQ and PQQ explains how that fits with older questionnaires.

Treat the record as controlled. Give it a named owner. Update it when directors change or new accounts are filed, and check it before generating each share code.

The notices worth watching

Notices under the Act carry a UK code on Find a Tender. These are the ones a care provider should recognise.

Set up alerts for engagement and transparency notices in your service area. A transparency notice for a service you already deliver is the moment to ask questions, not after the contract is signed. Our live tender search is a starting point.

Getting paid: 30 days, down the supply chain

The Act implies a 30-day payment term into most public contracts, counted from when the buyer receives a valid, undisputed invoice. Light touch contracts are not excluded. The same term is implied into subcontracts that deliver a public contract. If you subcontract visits or specialist input, you must pay within 30 days. If you are the subcontractor, you are owed the same.

What to actually do differently

• Check the regime in the contract notice before you start, because it changes your deadlines and your options.
• Read your assessment summary properly when it arrives, and keep it. Across three or four bids a pattern appears, and that pattern is usually worth more than any individual result.
• Look for a standstill end date in the award notice and diarise it in working days. On light touch contracts there may not be one, so raise concerns while the procurement is still running.
• Revisit your exclusion declarations once, properly, and keep the answer on file. Most providers copy last year's without rereading it.

None of this makes a weak submission win. It stops a strong one being lost on process, which is a different and more common failure.

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