Four months into the Procurement Act 2023 (PA23) and change is afoot. The Cabinet Office has launched a consultation in relation to proposed changes to the PA23.

Here, we summarise the changes which are being considered.   

The Cabinet Office has launched a consultation which is open until 5 September 2025. This can be found here: Public Procurement: Growing British industry, jobs and skills - consultation on further reforms to public procurement - GOV.UK 

The consultation anticipates that changes will be made to the PA23 in relation to issues that mainly concern SMEs and social value considerations as well as other “technical changes” to the PA23, details of which have not yet been provided.  

The key areas of change that are being considered are:

• If a contracting authority spends more than £100m per year, a requirement to publish three year targets for spend with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) voluntary, community, and social enterprises (VCSEs) and to publish annual performance information against these targets. 
• Amending the existing Section 70 of the PA23 (which has not yet come into force). This section will require publication of payments over £30k. It is proposed to remove this threshold and require the publication of all payments under public contracts (above the threshold) and notifiable-below-threshold-contracts. This would effectively mean payments under all contracts above £12,000 (for central government authorities) and £30,000 (for all other public authorities), other than exempt contracts. 
• For contracts over £5m, a requirement to exclude suppliers that cannot demonstrate prompt payment. 
• More flexibility for services for social care and other services for vulnerable persons. 
• A mandatory public interest test before deciding to outsource. 
• For contracts over £5m, mandatory award criteria regarding the supplier’s contribution to jobs, opportunities and skills, with a minimum 10% weight. 
• Where social value award criteria is used, a requirement to include a social value key performance indicator and report on this in the contract performance notice.
• Standardised social value criteria and matrices. 
• The ability to define the location of social value delivery. 

We anticipate that some of these proposals may be welcome, such as flexibility when procuring social care services and potentially the use of standardised social value criteria and matrices, which may help both contracting authorities and suppliers to deal with this tricky area of a procurement process. Some aspects may also provide a useful check-point for contracting authorities, such as examining whether there are in-sourcing options.  

Yet more transparency requirements may, however, put increased pressure on procurement practitioners already adjusting to the PA23 requirements.  

How Capsticks can help  

Capsticks acts for both contracting authorities and suppliers. With extensive knowledge of procurement law, our specialist team are always on hand to support you with all aspects of the procurement process and the Procurement Act 2023. 

Please speak with Katrina Day or Mary Mundy to learn more about how Capsticks can help.