What is the Procurement Act 2023?
The Procurement Act 2023 is the new legal framework governing how public bodies in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland buy goods, services, and works. It received Royal Assent in October 2023 and came into force on 24 February 2025, replacing the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015) and consolidating several separate regulatory regimes into a single, coherent piece of legislation.
The Act applies to contracts started on or after 24 February 2025. Any procurement that was already underway under the PCR 2015 before that date continues under the old rules for its full duration, so you may encounter both frameworks running in parallel for some time.
For UK SMEs that bid for public sector work, the Act matters because it changes how buyers design procurements, how suppliers register and engage, and how the whole system operates from first notice to contract award.
Why was it introduced?
The PCR 2015 was the UK's implementation of EU procurement directives. After Brexit, the government had the opportunity to design a framework better suited to the UK market. The stated aims were to simplify the rules, reduce administrative burden, improve transparency, and make it genuinely easier for SMEs and voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations to compete for public contracts.
Broadly, the case for reform rested on three observations: the old regulations were widely seen as procedurally rigid and difficult for smaller suppliers to navigate; transparency was inconsistent across the public sector; and buyers often struggled to use procurement as a lever for broader policy goals such as social value and innovation.
The key changes
A single Central Digital Platform
One of the most practical changes for suppliers is the creation of a Central Digital Platform. Suppliers now register once in one place rather than maintaining separate accounts on dozens of buying portals. The Find a Tender service acts as the front door for all above-threshold notices, and the platform pulls together registration details, certificates, and standard company information so you do not have to re-enter the same data for every opportunity.
This matters most for SMEs who previously found it costly and time-consuming to maintain accounts across multiple portals. A single registration should reduce that friction considerably. TenderSignal pulls notices from across the UK procurement landscape into one place, so you can monitor opportunities without logging into each portal individually.
A new competitive flexible procedure
Under the PCR 2015, buyers had to choose between a limited set of formal procedures. The Procurement Act introduces a "competitive flexible procedure" that gives contracting authorities more freedom to design their procurement process to fit the contract. Buyers can now hold structured market engagement sessions, run iterative dialogue, and refine requirements before publishing a final invitation to tender.
For suppliers this means procurement processes may look and feel different from one buyer to the next. Pay attention to the procedural steps set out in each procurement document rather than assuming the familiar PCR sequence applies.
Dynamic Markets replacing Dynamic Purchasing Systems
The Act replaces Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS) with "Dynamic Markets". The concept is similar: an open, ongoing list of pre-qualified suppliers that buyers can draw from when a need arises, without running a full competition each time. The key changes are that Dynamic Markets can cover a wider range of contract types than DPS could, and the transparency requirements around them have been strengthened.
If your business relies on being listed on a DPS to win call-off contracts, you will need to understand which dynamic markets are relevant to your sector and apply to join them. See our guide to what a Dynamic Purchasing System is and how it works for background on how these rolling pre-qualification lists operate.
From MEAT to MAT
Under the PCR 2015, buyers had to award contracts to the "most economically advantageous tender" (MEAT). The Procurement Act shifts this to the "most advantageous tender" (MAT). The practical effect is that buyers are no longer required to weight economic factors as the primary criterion. They can give greater weight to social value, environmental impact, innovation, or other policy objectives, as long as the criteria are published in advance and applied consistently.
For SMEs, this is broadly positive: buyers can now structure scoring to reward quality, local delivery, or social impact rather than defaulting to the lowest price. The shift also means it is worth reading each set of tender documents carefully to understand what a specific buyer actually values in a bid.
Procurement thresholds
The Act retains the concept of financial thresholds above which the full regulated procedure applies. These thresholds determine which notices must be published on Find a Tender and which can remain below the radar on platforms such as Contracts Finder. Our guide to UK procurement thresholds explains the current figures and what they mean for suppliers targeting contracts in different value bands.
Greater transparency through mandatory notices
The Act introduces a more structured series of required notices throughout the procurement lifecycle. These include pipeline notices (which give suppliers advance sight of what a buyer expects to procure over the coming financial year), planned procurement notices (published before a formal process opens), and contract award notices. Buyers also publish "transparency notices" for contracts awarded without a competitive process.
The effect is that you can now get earlier warning of upcoming opportunities, giving you more time to prepare, make contact with the buyer, and shape your bid. Pipeline notices in particular are useful for planning business development activity.
A central debarment list
The Act establishes a central list of excluded and debarred suppliers. A supplier that appears on the list can be excluded from competing for public contracts. The criteria for exclusion cover serious misconduct, poor performance on previous public contracts, and certain legal convictions, among others.
For most SMEs this is background information rather than an immediate concern, but it is worth knowing the list exists and understanding the exclusion grounds, particularly if your business operates in a sector where regulatory compliance is scrutinised closely.
SME-friendly provisions
Several provisions in the Act are specifically designed to make it easier for smaller businesses to win public sector work:
- Breaking contracts into lots. Buyers must consider dividing contracts into lots and provide a written explanation if they choose not to. Smaller lots are generally more accessible for SMEs.
- Prompt payment. The Act strengthens prompt payment rules through the supply chain, not just at the prime contractor level. Buyers must require that payment terms flow down to sub-contractors.
- Proportionate selection criteria. Buyers are expected to set selection criteria that are proportionate to the nature and value of the contract. Requiring three years of audited accounts or ten million pounds of professional indemnity insurance for a fifty-thousand-pound contract is now harder to justify.
- Exclusion of unnecessary barriers. Buyers must consider whether any pre-qualification requirements they set are genuinely necessary, rather than applying standard requirements by default.
What does this mean for your business?
The Procurement Act 2023 does not change the fundamental nature of public procurement. Buyers still publish notices, suppliers still submit bids, and contracts are still awarded on the basis of published criteria. What changes is the environment in which this happens: more transparency, more flexibility, a simplified registration process, and a stronger policy steer towards smaller suppliers.
The practical implications for most SMEs are:
- Register on the Central Digital Platform if you have not already done so. This is now the central point of access.
- Watch pipeline notices from the buyers you want to work with. Early visibility is a genuine advantage in a competitive market.
- Read each procurement document carefully rather than assuming a familiar procedure. The competitive flexible procedure means buyers have more latitude to design their own process.
- If your sector uses Dynamic Markets, identify which ones are relevant and apply to join them. Being on the list means you can receive call-off contracts without competing from scratch each time.
- Look at the award criteria, not just the scope of work. Under MAT, buyers can weight social value, environmental commitments, or innovation more heavily than before.
What you should do now
The most immediate step is to make sure you are not missing relevant opportunities. The Act has increased the volume of notices published on Find a Tender, with pipeline and planned procurement notices now preceding the formal process. Monitoring these manually across multiple portals is time-consuming.
Set up free tender alerts on TenderSignal to receive daily or weekly digests of notices that match your business profile, CPV codes, and regions. You can browse live tenders without an account to get a sense of what is currently published in your sector.
Beyond monitoring, consider reviewing your standard bid documentation. Under the new regime, buyers have more freedom to ask different questions in different formats. Having a flexible, well-structured evidence library of case studies, accreditations, social value statements, and financial information will help you respond quickly when the right opportunity appears.
The Procurement Act 2023 represents a genuine shift in how the public sector buys, and the direction of travel is broadly favourable for well-prepared SMEs. Earlier transparency, simpler registration, proportionate criteria, and a formal commitment to breaking work into lots all point in the right direction. The suppliers who benefit most will be those who engage early, monitor the pipeline, and build the capability to respond to a wider range of procurement approaches.