Procurement Act support

What are the changes and how do they impact you?

Change is coming. The most significant changes to the way public sector organisations buy goods and services for a generation are due to come into force in October 2024 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The reforms set out in the Procurement Act will demand changes to every public sector procurement function. It will force modifications to processes, policy, governance, systems, data, and much more.

Understanding how you will be impacted is not straight forward. This is a large and technical Act. It includes a number of regulation-making powers which are necessary to ensure that the legislation will continue to facilitate a modern procurement structure for many years to come and will allow the public sector to keep pace with technological advances and new trade agreements.

Contracting Authorities should take control over their response. Whilst compliance to the new regulations will be mandatory, organisations will undoubtedly have different appetites for change. There are three broad options you should consider as a senior leadership team before committing to one:

Day 1 compliance only	Amending processes and governance in response to changes to transparency obligations and debarment rules, to name just two.
Take advantage	Make use of the new flexibilities permitted, particularly around the ‘competitive flexible’ procedure, frameworks and dynamic purchases. This will require significant upskilling and empowerment of staff, whilst amending governance and assurance regimes accordingly.
Catalyst for change	Undertake a deeper review of the effectiveness of your procurement function and then deliver a roadmap of transformation change, of which procurement reform is a critical element.

Focussing on what matters most. We have identified three steps that all public sector procurement functions should take now so they are ready to take advantage of the upcoming changes. These are ‘no regret’ actions that will help you to become prepared once the countdown officially starts towards Day 1 under the new regulations.

Agree as a leadership group your scale of ambition
As above, you have options regarding how far you want to go. Do you want to take a risk-based approach where compliance is the sole focus or do you want to go further?

Assess your readiness for delivering change
Before you start implementing change, you first need to understand your 'as is' (current policies and processes, people, and systems). Assessing whether you have the right capability and capacity within the current team to successfully effect the change required will be crucial.

Prepare for implementation
Ready your leadership group and wider team for the sprint to implementation next year. You will need a clear plan to bring teams on the journey with you.