Reading a scoring feedback letter properly

Feedback on a lost bid is the cheapest consultancy you will ever be given. It is written by the people who decide, it is specific to your writing, and it costs nothing. Almost every provider we meet has a folder of them, unread past the first paragraph.

Read it a week later, not the day it lands

On the day, you are looking for reasons the panel was wrong. A week later you can see what they actually wrote. Nothing in the letter changes in between, but what you are able to take from it does.

What an assessment summary must contain

For procurements under the Procurement Act 2023, the Procurement Regulations 2024 set out what an assessment summary includes. Use this list to check yours when it arrives:

the award criteria, their weighting and how each was assessed;
your score for each criterion and sub-criterion, and your total;
the reasons for each score, with reference to what was in your tender;
if you lost, the same information for the most advantageous tender, redacted where it is commercially sensitive;
any other reason you were unsuccessful, such as missing a minimum score.

Three limits are worth knowing. Summaries go only to suppliers whose tenders were assessed, so if you were excluded or failed a pass/fail stage, guidance says the buyer should tell you in writing instead. They are required when a framework itself is awarded, but not for call-offs under a framework. And on a multi-supplier framework, government guidance says the comparison should normally be the lowest-scoring successful tender. That shows how far you were from the line, which is more useful than your gap to the top.

For procurements still under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, the Regulation 86 letter must give the reasons for the decision, including the characteristics and relative advantages of the successful tender, and the scores, if any, of both you and the winner.

Separate the three things it contains

A scoring letter mixes three different kinds of information, and they need different responses.

Your score per question. A number against a published scale. This is fact.
The rationale. The evaluator's reason for that number. This is the valuable part.
The winning bidder's relative advantages. Often vague, sometimes revealing, occasionally the only clue about price.

Providers tend to read the third and ignore the second. Reverse that.

Look for the words the rubric uses

Rationales are written by evaluators working from a scoring guide, and the guide's vocabulary leaks into the feedback. If your rationale says the response "lacked detail on how this would be monitored", the guide almost certainly asked for a monitoring mechanism and you gave an intention.

Underline every noun in the rationale. Those nouns are the things the panel wanted and did not find.

A rationale, taken apart

An illustrative rationale for a safeguarding question scored 3 out of 5:

"The response describes the training programme and reporting procedure. Limited detail on how learning from incidents is shared with staff or how the effectiveness of training is checked. No reference to joint working with the local authority safeguarding team."

Each noun becomes a task:

What the panel wanted	What to add next time
Learning from incidents shared with staff	The meeting or bulletin where it happens, how often, and one change it produced
Effectiveness of training checked	Competency observations or supervision checks after training, with a frequency
Joint working with the local authority	How and when you refer, who makes the referral, and how you take part in follow-up meetings

Notice what the panel did not criticise. The training programme and reporting procedure were accepted. Keep them, shorten them, and spend the words you save on the three gaps.

The patterns worth counting

One letter tells you about one bid. Four letters tell you about how you write. When we debrief a provider's back catalogue, the same four findings come up repeatedly.

Feedback phrase	What it usually means
"Generic" or "not specific to this contract"	You reused an answer and did not localise it to the geography, the cohort or the lot
"Lacked evidence" or "unsubstantiated"	You made claims with no number, named role, timescale or document behind them
"Did not fully address the question"	The question had two or three parts and you answered one
"Some detail provided"	A polite three. You described what you do but not how it works

Build an answer library, not a folder of regrets

The practical output of reading feedback is a document, not a feeling. For each question theme you bid on, keep the best version of your answer, the score it achieved, and the rationale that came back.

Next time that theme appears, you start from a scored answer with known weaknesses rather than from nothing. Over a year this compounds. It is the single highest-return administrative habit in bid writing, and it costs an hour per outcome.

When to ask for more

You are entitled to feedback, and under the Procurement Act 2023 an assessment summary should give you scores and reasons per criterion. If what you received is thinner than that, ask. Politely, in writing, referencing the relevant regulation, before the standstill period closes.

Most authorities respond. Some will offer a debrief call, which is more useful than the letter because you can ask follow-up questions.

Know which clock you are on

"Before the standstill period closes" depends on the regime.

Procurement Act, most contracts. Eight working days from the contract award notice.
Procurement Act, light touch contracts. Standstill is voluntary, and most social care is light touch. If the notice gives no standstill end date, the contract may be signed straight away, so ask your questions quickly. Our Procurement Act guide explains why.
NHS healthcare under the Provider Selection Regime (PSR). Written representations must reach the buyer before midnight at the end of the eighth working day after standstill begins. If you are still unhappy once the buyer has reviewed them, you can ask the Independent Patient Choice and Procurement Panel to consider them, within five working days of receiving the buyer's decision. The panel advises the buyer. It does not decide for it.

Questions to ask at a debrief

A debrief is not a rescoring exercise, so ask about the next bid, not the last one.

Which single change would have moved our lowest-scoring answer up a band?
Was any part of a question left unanswered, or answered in the wrong place?
Where did our evidence feel generic to this contract?
Did our attachments count towards the score, or were they outside what the panel could consider?
How far were we from the lowest successful score?

Write the answers into your answer library the same day, next to the score and rationale they explain.

What not to do

Do not challenge because you are disappointed. A challenge is a legal process with costs attached, and disagreement with a score is not a ground. Procedural error, a criterion applied that was not published, or an evaluator acting outside the stated methodology are grounds. Wounded pride is not.

And do not throw the letter away because you won. Winning bids get feedback too, and a three on a question you scraped through on is the one that will cost you next time.

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