Blog: Friday 8th November 2024 - Anthony Collins, Corporate Partner

A guide for updating your contract procedure rules

With the Procurement Act 2023 due to come into force on 24 February 2025, now is the time for local authorities to update their Contract Procedure Rules to align with the requirements of the Act, the subsidiary regulations that sit under the Act and reflect the Cabinet Office guidance that supports the interpretation of the new rules. This is also a great opportunity to use this updating exercise to identify risk areas, potential efficiency gains, unnecessary barriers, and how to promote best procurement practice more generally.

Anthony Collins have produced a short guide to assist local authorities with this exercise and you obtain a free copy at:

https://comms.anthonycollins.com/s/898913a45fa5db4d09c835c15a12872a34c9c3a1 .

The guide covers 15 key focus areas.  Some of these relate to updating certain sections such as, for example, procurement exemptions, procedures, principles and objectives, evaluation and award protocols and contract modifications.  New provisions will also need to be considered with regard to the publication of notices, completing conflict of interest assessments and the new rules on managing contract performance including publishing data in respect of how suppliers have been performing on public contracts.

In addition, awareness will need to be raised about the new exclusion and debarment regime, in particular the introduction of the Government’s debarment list including the actions that a local authority must take if it decides to exclude a supplier from a procurement in reliance on one of the new expanded exclusion grounds.  As decisions such as this can have far-reaching consequences for suppliers, authorities should take this opportunity to review their existing schemes of delegation, to check that the approval requirements and delegated authorities for making such decisions are appropriate.

More generally, authorities should use this updating exercise to reflect on their existing strategies, policies and corporate plans particularly in relation to securing social value through procurement. These strategic documents, together with the contract procedure rules, should provide a steer to officers on how to weave the golden thread of social value throughout the procurement lifecycle and signal best practice by using the authority’s policies to drive procurement activity and avoiding using measures that are irrelevant and risk being discriminatory and disproportionate.

Anthony Collins have been supporting clients with this exercise and can provide more bespoke support by reviewing, revising, or replacing existing contract procedure rules, as required.  Please get in touch with steven.brunning@anthonycollins.com if you would like to discuss your authority’s specific requirements.