The Procurement Act 2023 and Procurement Regulations 2024 came into force this week (24 February 2025). 

As the biggest regulatory reform since the introduction of the consolidated EU rules in 2006, is this a brave new world in regulated public purchasing? What are some of the early practical points to watch whether you are a contracting authority or a supplier? 

There is certainly a wave of expectation across the procurement market that the Act will have a positive impact on how procurements are run and contracts are managed across the UK (with more limited application in Scotland which, broadly, maintains the old regime). 

Whether and how the new flexibilities are adopted will depend on the public sector's resources and time to design new procedures, suppliers' understanding of the new regime, and, crucially, avoiding process breaches of the new rules which can lead to complaint or challenge. In our first update, we have selected three important areas which may not leap out from the new law: 

1. Exclusions regime. There is a lot under the skin of the new exclusions rules which now look, broadly, to consider not only the Supplier but the Supplier's associated persons and connected persons. Authorities have a discretion to test known sub-contractors against the exclusion grounds, but no discretion in being required to check sub-contractors against the debarment register. As the exclusions regime links into the new debarment regime, we expect scrutiny of contracting authorities' application of the exclusion rules. Ensuring that the correct parties are tested (on an ongoing basis during the procurement and the contract lifecycle) and that appropriate decisions are made is going to be key. 
2. Conflicts of interest. Risks of conflicts (authority side or supplier side) are an increasing source of procurement litigation and complaints. The new Conflicts Assessment does not need to be published but is likely to be requested by unhappy suppliers. Appropriate treatment of supplier-side conflicts needs to be built into conditions of participation and associated tender documents. 
3. Clarifications. The recent Optima decision is a reminder to ensure that clarifications raised by suppliers are treated in a consistent and clear way to help suppliers to submit their best bids and to protect the contracting authority against challenge. In the early life of the Procurement Act, we can expect many more clarifications from suppliers and so contracting authorities will want to ensure that appropriate time is built into the procurement to deal with these.

Clyde & Co's procurement law team is producing a short series of comments on key practical issues to consider and for further information please contact David Hansom or another member of the team.