The Procurement Act 2023: A Plain-English Guide For Small Businesses

The rules for how many UK public bodies buy goods, services and works changed on 24 February 2025, when the Procurement Act 2023 came into force. It does not cover Scottish devolved public bodies (see the Scotland note below). This guide sets out what that means for a small supplier, in plain English. Every claim below is taken from GOV.UK guidance, linked in the text and sources. It is not legal advice, and the buyer's own tender documents always decide what you must do for a specific bid.

What changed in February 2025

According to the Cabinet Office's short guide for suppliers, the rules changed on 24 February 2025. The guide says the Act aims to simplify bidding, negotiation and partnership working with the public sector, introduces a new “competitive flexible” procedure, and requires public bodies to provide bid assessments for final tenders so suppliers get more consistent feedback. It also says the Act removes bureaucratic barriers for smaller businesses and voluntary, community and social enterprises.

GOV.UK's transitional arrangements guidance covers procurements that started before the change, so older notices you see may still follow the previous rules.

Find a Tender is now the central digital platform

The Central Digital Platform factsheet describes the enhanced Find a Tender service as the central digital platform for public procurement, launched on 24 February 2025. It is where buyers publish procurement information, and where suppliers store their commonly used business information. The factsheet states that Find a Tender is free to use for everyone and that you should not pay to view opportunities in the public sector.

Supplier registration, per the same factsheet and the supplier guide:

• You only need to register when you want to bid for a contract.
• Suppliers who used the old service must register again; saved searches carry over if you use the same email address.
• Core details are entered once and reused across bids: basic details (including name, address, Companies House number or equivalent, and SME or VCSE status), financial information such as recent accounts, connected persons and exclusion-related declarations.
• Your information is shared only with the buyers you choose, and it is your responsibility to keep it accurate. The platform does not check it for buyers, who carry out their own due diligence.

GOV.UK has a step-by-step page for registering your organisation and first administrator. See also our Find a Tender source guide.

The main notice types you will see

GOV.UK's guide to using the platform says there are 17 notices across the procurement and contract management cycle, and that not every notice is used in every procurement. The ones most useful to a small supplier are these.

• Pipeline notice — GOV.UK's pipeline notice guidance describes it as setting out information about public contracts with an estimated value of more than £2 million that the buyer plans to advertise over an 18-month reporting period. It is mandatory for authorities expecting to spend more than £100 million under relevant contracts in the financial year, and voluntary for others, so a buyer without one has not necessarily got nothing planned.
• Preliminary market engagement notice — per GOV.UK's e-learning module on procurement procedures, a buyer that intends to run, or has run, market engagement must publish this notice before the tender notice, or explain in the tender notice why it did not. The module says publishing one is not a commitment to run a procurement.
• Tender notice — the notice that opens a competitive procurement. The same module says it must set out the buyer's details, the subject and estimated value, how tenders will be assessed and the timescales.
• Below-threshold tender notice — for lower-value contracts. GOV.UK's below-threshold contracts guidance says these notices are published on the central digital platform, and gives threshold figures of £12,000 for central government authorities and £30,000 for other authorities (including VAT) for notifiable contracts.
• Contract award notice — per the contract award notices and standstill guidance, it tells interested parties the buyer intends to enter into a contract with a named supplier. It is published before the contract is entered into and starts a standstill period of at least eight working days. In competitive procedures, assessment summaries go to successful and unsuccessful suppliers before the notice is published.
• Contract details notice — the contract details notice guidance says it tells the public that a contract has been entered into, and is published within 30 days of that. For contracts over £5 million the guidance also requires a copy of the contract to be published, which may be redacted.

Note the order: the contract award notice comes before signing and the contract details notice comes after. If you track awards to work out when a contract may be retendered, you will usually want the details notice as well.

The competitive flexible procedure

GOV.UK's competitive tendering procedures guidance says the Act provides two competitive procedures: the open procedure and the competitive flexible procedure. Both begin with a tender notice. The flexible procedure lets the buyer design its own multi-stage process, and the notice or tender documents must set out how it will run.

For suppliers, the Cabinet Office's paper on the procedure and negotiation makes these points:

• The stages, and whether negotiation will take place, should be stated in the tender notice or documents.
• Negotiation can happen at any stage. The Act does not prescribe a time limit, other than that the procedure should be kept proportionate. It most commonly follows an initial down-selection of suppliers.
• Suppliers should generally be treated equally, and a buyer must not use one supplier's proposal to inform talks with a competitor.

That paper is written for buyers, so it does not set out supplier rights. The practical step is to read the notice and tender documents for the stages, the number of suppliers invited and the topics open to negotiation.

What it means for how notices appear

On Find a Tender you can search all notices, filter by notice type, by the “Suitability” filter for small and medium-sized enterprises and by contract location, and save a search to get emails when a matching notice is posted (see the platform guide). The same guide says notices contain structured data in the Open Contracting Data Standard, which is what lets tools such as TenderHawk read them.

Contracts Finder is still online. GOV.UK's below-threshold guidance says below-threshold tender notices go on the central digital platform, replacing the old requirement to publish only on Contracts Finder, so lower-value opportunities may now appear on Find a Tender. Older notices may still sit on Contracts Finder, so it remains sensible to check both. Our Contracts Finder guide and official portals overview cover the other sources.

If you sell to Scottish public bodies

GOV.UK's devolved contracting authorities guidance says devolved Scottish authorities are listed as excluded authorities to which the Act does not apply, and that Scottish procurement legislation continues to apply to their procurement. Where a devolved Scottish authority buys jointly with an authority regulated by the Act, the guidance says the Act applies in its entirety. It also says the Scottish Government plans its own regulations to disapply Scottish legislation where appropriate, so check for changes. Our Public Contracts Scotland guide covers the Scottish source.

Thresholds change, so check the current figures

Contract value thresholds are updated periodically. GOV.UK's PPN 023 sets the amounts from 1 January 2026, for example £135,018 for goods, services or works contracts with a central government authority that fall in no other category, £207,720 for the same with sub-central authorities, and £5,193,000 for works. Do not assume a figure you read elsewhere is current.

Sources to check yourself

• Procurement Act 2023 short guides
• A short guide for suppliers
• Central Digital Platform factsheet
• PPN 023: 2026 threshold amounts