Procurement Act 2023: what it means for care providers bidding for contracts
New rules, new transparency, new opportunities — a practical guide for SMEs in health and social care.
A new era for public procurement
On 24 February 2025, the Procurement Act 2023 came into force, replacing the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015) that had governed UK public procurement for a decade. If your organisation bids for adult social care contracts with local authorities — domiciliary care, supported living, children’s services, extra care housing — this change affects you directly.
This is not a minor tweak. The Act introduces new procedures, mandatory digital transparency, and strengthened rights for suppliers challenging unfair decisions. For care providers who understand the changes, there are real opportunities. For those who don’t, there is real risk of being caught out by compliance requirements they didn’t know existed.
The Procurement Act 2023 covers adult social care contracts let by local authorities. NHS healthcare service contracts — primary care, community health, mental health NHS trusts — fall under the Provider Selection Regime (PSR), which came into force on 1 January 2024. If you work with NHS commissioners, read our PSR guide instead.
What the Procurement Act 2023 replaces
The PCR 2015 was complex, prescriptive, and widely criticised as a barrier for SME suppliers. It specified six procurement procedures, required extensive documentation, and favoured large incumbents who could navigate the bureaucracy.
The Procurement Act 2023 is built around different principles:
- Simplicity — two main procedures instead of six
- Flexibility — commissioners design bespoke processes suited to the contract
- Transparency — mandatory publication throughout the procurement lifecycle, not just at award
- SME access — an explicit duty on contracting authorities to remove barriers facing small and medium-sized suppliers
For care providers, the practical effect is that procurement processes will look different from council to council. That is deliberate. The Act gives commissioners latitude to design procedures appropriate to the service and market. What stays consistent is what must be published and when.
The two procurement procedures
Under PCR 2015, there were six prescribed procedures (open, restricted, competitive dialogue, competitive procedure with negotiation, innovation partnership, and design contest). The Procurement Act 2023 replaces all but one:
Open procedure
Unchanged in principle. Any supplier can respond to an open tender. No pre-qualification stage. The commissioner evaluates all submissions against published criteria.
Best for: straightforward, well-specified contracts where price matters and the market is competitive.
Competitive flexible procedure
This is the new design-your-own option. Commissioners can create multi-stage processes — shortlisting, dialogue, negotiation, presentations — as they see fit. Each commissioner may design it differently for different contracts.
Best for: complex services, high-value contracts, partnerships requiring co-design or negotiation.
You will increasingly see tender processes that don’t look like the old restricted or competitive dialogue procedures. Read every procurement document carefully — do not assume the process follows the old PCR 2015 structure. Ask questions during the clarification period if the process is unclear.
The Light Touch Regime
Adult social care services — including domiciliary care, supported living, and personal care — continue to qualify for the Light Touch Regime (LTR). This sits within the Act but with lighter requirements:
- Higher threshold: £663,540 (contracts below this value need not follow the full Act regime)
- No minimum timescales: Commissioners can set their own deadlines
- Process flexibility: Fewer mandatory notices and process requirements
- No framework cap: Light Touch frameworks can run indefinitely (standard frameworks are capped at 4 years, open frameworks at 8)
The LTR recognises that social care is a relationship-based market where individual service users may have legitimate say in who provides their care. A new “user choice contract” provision allows direct awards where the service user or their carer has a preference for a particular provider.
Transparency: what changes for suppliers
This is where the biggest practical change lies. Under PCR 2015, transparency was mostly concentrated at the tender notice and contract award stages. The Procurement Act 2023 mandates publication throughout.
There are 17 notice types across the procurement lifecycle. The most relevant for care providers:
| Notice | When published | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline notice | Within 56 days of financial year start | Contracts >£2m planned in next 18 months |
| Tender notice | When procurement starts | Full specification, timescales, evaluation criteria |
| Contract award notice | Before contract is signed | Scores, rationale, standstill period trigger |
| Contract details notice | After signing | Contract value, parties, key terms |
| KPI performance notice | Annually (contracts >£5m) | Contractor performance against 3 published KPIs |
What this means for you:
Pipeline notices from large councils will give you 18 months’ advance warning of upcoming contracts worth over £2 million. This is genuinely new intelligence you did not have before. If your target commissioners publish pipeline notices, read them. Use that lead time to position relationships and prepare.
The central digital platform: Find a Tender
All regulated procurement notices must now be published on the Cabinet Office’s central digital platform — the enhanced Find a Tender service (FTS), launched on 24 February 2025.
Suppliers must register on the platform to:
- Receive alerts about relevant opportunities
- Submit supplier information (once, used across multiple procurements)
- View assessment summaries and feedback on bids
- Track contract performance notices for contracts you deliver
Registering requires:
- Company name and address
- Companies House number (or equivalent)
- VAT number (if applicable)
- Insurance levels and financial accounts
- SME, VCSE, or public mutual status
If you have not registered on Find a Tender, do it now. Some procurement documents under the new Act require a registered supplier profile before you can participate. Do not wait until a tender lands to find out your registration is incomplete.
The standstill period: what changed
Under PCR 2015, the standstill period was 10 calendar days, triggered by a standstill letter sent to unsuccessful suppliers.
Under the Procurement Act 2023, the standstill period is 8 working days, beginning the day the contract award notice is published on Find a Tender. The notice is published publicly — no letter required.
This matters because:
- The clock starts earlier — from publication, not from when you read your feedback
- Assessment summaries are published — you can see your scores and the winner’s scores on the platform
- Challenge rights are clearer — if you believe the process was unfair, the 8-working-day window is your window to act
For most providers, the standstill period won’t change day-to-day bidding. But if you ever lose a tender you believe was misjudged, the new transparency means you have better information to assess whether to challenge.
SME protections: the explicit duty
One of the most significant shifts is the Act’s explicit requirement on contracting authorities to “have regard to the fact that small and medium sized enterprises may face particular barriers to participation and should therefore consider whether such barriers can be removed or reduced.”
In practice, this should mean:
- Shorter, less burdensome pre-qualification requirements
- Reasonable contract lot sizes (not aggregated contracts that exclude small providers)
- Plain-English procurement documents
- Meaningful feedback on unsuccessful bids
This does not happen automatically. If you find a procurement process is imposing unreasonable barriers — excessive insurance requirements, disproportionate financial thresholds, overly compressed timescales — you can raise this formally during the clarification period and reference the Act’s SME duty.
What changes for frameworks and DPS
Frameworks under the Procurement Act 2023 now come in two types:
Closed frameworks — as before, fixed at the point of award, maximum 4 years. Suppliers cannot join after it opens.
Open frameworks — new under the Act, maximum 8 years. Commissioners must reopen the framework at specified intervals to allow new suppliers to join. This is significant: it means you can access frameworks that would previously have been closed to you for four years.
Dynamic markets (the successor to Dynamic Purchasing Systems/DPS) remain open-ended with no supplier limit. Suppliers can join or leave throughout the life of the market.
Watch for frameworks relaunching as open frameworks in the next 12–18 months. Councils will be transitioning existing frameworks to the new structure. An open framework gives you a route onto vehicles that were previously inaccessible.
How this affects domiciliary care, supported living, and children’s services
Domiciliary care
Most domiciliary care contracts sit within the Light Touch Regime, below the £663,540 threshold or qualifying for LTR by service type. The main change is transparency: even LTR contracts above certain values require contract details notices. Councils may use the new user choice contract provision to award packages directly where the service user has expressed a preference.
Supported living
Supported living contracts are often higher value (particularly for specialist services) and may fall outside LTR thresholds. For these, the full procurement framework applies. The competitive flexible procedure will be common — expect commissioners to design bespoke processes for complex packages.
Children’s services
Independent fostering agencies and children’s residential providers are subject to the full Act where contracts exceed thresholds. Pipeline notices from local authorities with significant children’s services spend will give earlier visibility of upcoming procurements.
Preparing for the new regime
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Register on Find a Tender — Go to find-tender.service.gov.uk and create your supplier profile. You need your Companies House number, VAT number, financial accounts, and insurance details. Keep it current.
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Monitor pipeline notices — Set up alerts for target commissioners. Any council spending more than £100m on procurement must publish pipeline notices within 56 days of their financial year start (1 April). Check these for contracts >£2m planned in the next 18 months.
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Review your policies and procedures — The Act strengthens exclusion grounds. If your organisation has had any regulatory issues (CQC enforcement, safeguarding investigations, financial irregularities), take legal advice on whether disclosure is required and how to present it.
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Update your evidence library — The move to competitive flexible procedures means commissioners will design bespoke processes. You need a flexible, modular evidence base — case studies, KPI data, policies — that can be reconfigured for different question structures.
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Brief your board — If your organisation delivers contracts >£5m with a local authority, expect annual KPI performance notices to be published on Find a Tender. Your performance will be public. Make sure your delivery matches what you promised in your bid.
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Read every procurement document carefully — Do not assume the process follows old PCR 2015 patterns. Under the competitive flexible procedure, each commissioner designs their own process. The rules are in the documents, not in your memory of how it used to work.
Key thresholds at a glance
| Threshold | What triggers |
|---|---|
| £663,540 | Light Touch Regime upper threshold for social care services |
| £2m | Must be included in pipeline notices |
| £5m | Annual KPI performance notices required |
| £100m | Pipeline notice publication is mandatory for the contracting authority |
Common misconceptions
“My contracts are too small for this to matter.” Most LTR contracts face lighter requirements, but transparency obligations still apply above certain values. And even for smaller contracts, the platform, the procedures, and the evidence expectations are the new normal.
“The council will explain the process.” Sometimes. But under the competitive flexible procedure, every process is bespoke. You cannot rely on familiarity with ‘how it’s always been done’. Read the procurement documents first.
“This only affects the commissioners, not us.” Suppliers are directly affected through changed notice requirements, new platform registration requirements, and new rights (and obligations) around standstill challenges.
Bidding under the new Procurement Act?
We help care providers navigate framework applications, DPS admissions, and call-off tenders under the Procurement Act 2023. If the new rules feel complex, that’s because they are — but we’ve mapped them so you don’t have to.
Want a fast, practical steer on your next bid?
Send the tender pack (or link) and deadline — we’ll confirm fit, risks, and recommended scope.