Procurement in a Nutshell – New Procedures
16th January, 2015
In September 2014, the Cabinet Office published the draft Public Contract Regulations 2015 which will introduce substantial reform to the existing public procurement regime.
The draft regulations are available in full on the Cabinet Office website here.
To save you time and to help all practitioners, each week we will issue succinct notes on key proposed changes.
Procurement in a Nutshell: New Procedures
In addition to the existing Open, Restricted and Competitive Dialogue procedures, two new procedures will be introduced, namely the Competitive Procedure with Negotiation and the Innovation Partnership.
In this first Procurement in a Nutshell note, we outline the proposed new competitive procedure.
What’s New?
Competitive Procedure with Negotiation
The main features are:
- The number of candidates to be invited to participate in the procedure can be limited
- Submitted tenders are treated as an “initial tender” and used as the basis for subsequent negotiations
- Initial and subsequent tenders are negotiated with tenderers to improve their content. Importantly, however, published minimum requirements may not be adjusted and must remain as initially published
- Negotiation following submission of the final tenders is prohibited
- The number of tenders may be reduced during the contract award process, if the right to do so has been reserved
- Contracts do not have to be negotiated if the Contracting Authority is comfortable with the initial tender (provided the right to move straight to award has been reserved)
- The situations in which this procedure can be used will be the same as for Competitive Dialogue
Why is it important?
This new procedure is available to all with little qualification (like the Competitive Dialogue Procedure) and offers the opportunity for discussion with bidders which has been requested for many years to reflect the commerciality of the situation authorities and bidders are in.
How can I find out more?
If you have any queries about the new Competitive Procedure with Negotiation or on any aspect of procurement, please contact us via our procurement hotline on 0191 204 4464.
Please note that this briefing is designed to be informative, not advisory and represents our understanding of English law and practice as at the date indicated. We would always recommend that you should seek specific guidance on any particular legal issue.
This page may contain links that direct you to third party websites. We have no control over and are not responsible for the content, use by you or availability of those third party websites, for any products or services you buy through those sites or for the treatment of any personal information you provide to the third party.
