The UK has been in an extended technique of procurement regulation reform that was because of kick in on 28 October 2024, following a 6-month ‘go stay’ discover for the Procurement Act 2023. At the moment, a 4-month delay has been introduced and the brand new UK procurement guidelines will solely enter into pressure on 24 February 2025 (barring any additional delays).
This announcement follows hypothesis (on LinkedIn) {that a} delay was mandatory as a result of the digital platform underpinning the brand new system wouldn’t have been prepared on time. Nevertheless, the explanations given by Cupboard Workplace level in a special path. Within the assertion, the UK Authorities has indicated that, underneath the Procurement Act 2023,
… the earlier administration (the Conservative authorities) printed a Nationwide Procurement Coverage Assertion [this one] to which contracting authorities should have regard. However this Assertion doesn’t meet the problem of making use of the total potential of public procurement to ship worth for cash, financial progress, and social worth. [The Government has] subsequently taken the choice to start the important work of manufacturing a brand new Nationwide Procurement Coverage Assertion that clearly units out this Authorities’s priorities for public procurement in assist of our missions.
It’s essential that the brand new regime within the Procurement Act goes stay with a daring and impressive Assertion that drives supply of the Authorities’s missions, and subsequently, I’m proposing a brief delay to the graduation of the Act to February 2025 so this work could be accomplished.
To be trustworthy, I don’t discover this justification very convincing — whether or not it’s a curtain to cowl issues with the digital platform or not. It’s because the Nationwide Procurement Coverage Assertion (NPPS) is certain to play a really minor function in procurement follow, given the awkward place it has throughout the set of duties arising from the Procurement Act 2023—as I discover intimately right here. Furthermore, the NPPS is by design certain to alter sooner or later (particularly when there’s a change of presidency), however future adjustments to the NPPS won’t set off the form of pause that’s being carried out now. And, lastly, pushing again the entry into pressure of the Procurement Act 2023 and the related NPPS leaves is within the present default, the place the earlier iteration of the NPPS (this one, additionally by a Conservative authorities—I do know, complicated, so let’s name it the ‘outdated’ NPPS) is meant to be guiding procurement selections. So, stopping the entry into pressure of the brand new NPPS to depart the outdated NPPS just isn’t exactly going to create any change in coverage and follow between now and February 2025 (even assuming the NPPS has coverage supply potential).
For me, this transfer and delay is regarding as a result of it exhibits how the incoming Authorities locations extreme hopes on procurement, and the NPPS specifically, as a coverage supply device. Greater than ever, this stresses the necessity to have a critical dialog in regards to the limits of procurement regulation and the necessity for onerous regulation in lots of areas (beginning with tackling local weather change and supporting a simply environmental transition) if we’re to unlock the change we want on the required tempo.
