Last reviewed: 26 July 2026

The short answer

The Procurement Act 2023 is the law that now governs how most public bodies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland buy goods, services and works. It went live on 24 February 2025 and replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and its sister regulations. For an SME bid team, the three changes that matter most in day-to-day bidding are: the award test is now the Most Advantageous Tender (MAT) rather than the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT); every opportunity and notice is published through a single Central Digital Platform that feeds the Find a Tender service; and there is far more published transparency across the contract lifecycle, including key performance indicators on contracts over 5 million pounds. None of this changes the core discipline of bidding well, but it does change where you look, how you register, and what buyers expect to see.

Procurements that began under the old Public Contracts Regulations 2015 continue under those older rules until they conclude, so for a transition period you will meet both regimes. If a tender pack cites regulation numbers from 2015, it is a legacy procurement; if it cites sections of the Procurement Act 2023, it is new. Read the citations before you assume which rulebook applies.

What actually changed

The Act consolidates several separate rulebooks into one. Before February 2025, public procurement was spread across the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016, the Concession Contracts Regulations 2016 and the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011. The Procurement Act 2023 brings the general public-sector rules together and sits above a supporting set of secondary regulations and statutory guidance.

The named tender procedures that bidders learned under the old regime, such as the restricted procedure and the competitive procedure with negotiation, are gone. In their place the Act offers two routes: the open procedure, a single-stage competition, and the competitive flexible procedure, which lets a contracting authority design a process that suits the contract, including multiple stages, dialogue and negotiation. In practice this means you will see more variation in how competitions are run, and you have to read each tender’s process rules rather than assume a standard shape.

Scotland is not covered by the Procurement Act 2023. Scottish public bodies continue to run their own procurement regime, so if you bid north of the border you are working to different rules and different portals.

MAT replaces MEAT

Under the old regime, contracts were awarded to the Most Economically Advantageous Tender, or MEAT. The Procurement Act 2023 replaces that test with the Most Advantageous Tender, or MAT. The word that disappears is “economically”, and that is deliberate. It signals that award is not only about price and narrow economic factors. A contracting authority can weight award criteria towards quality, delivery, and wider public benefit, including social value, without having to argue that those factors are purely economic.

For an SME, MAT is an opportunity rather than a technicality. If you cannot always be the cheapest, a well-evidenced quality and social-value response now sits squarely inside the award test. The practical consequence is the same as before but sharper: read the published award criteria and their weightings, and put your effort where the marks are. If social value carries a meaningful share of the score, treat it as a scored section that can win or lose the bid, not as a box-ticking annex.

The Central Digital Platform and Find a Tender

The Act introduces a Central Digital Platform. Suppliers register their core organisation details once, such as company information, financial data, connected persons and exclusion-related declarations, and reuse that information across multiple bids instead of re-keying it into every tender. The platform underpins the Find a Tender service, which is the official place where in-scope opportunities and the growing set of statutory notices are published.

The practical step for a new SME bidder is to register your organisation on the Central Digital Platform early, before you need it for a live deadline. Getting your supplier information verified and complete takes time you do not want to be spending in the last 48 hours of a submission. Once your core data is in, later bids reuse it, which is one of the concrete ways the Act tries to reduce the paperwork burden that historically fell hardest on smaller suppliers.

Transparency notices

The Act creates a series of notices published across the whole life of a procurement, not just at the advert stage. Depending on the contract and its value, these can include pipeline notices that flag upcoming demand, planned procurement notices, tender notices, contract award notices, contract details notices, and contract performance notices later in delivery.

For a bidder, this transparency is free market intelligence. Pipeline and planned procurement notices let you see work coming months ahead, so you can build relationships, form partnerships and prepare a response rather than reacting to a live deadline. Contract award and contract details notices tell you who won, and sometimes at what price, which sharpens your bid or no-bid judgement next time the same buyer comes to market.

KPIs on contracts over 5 million pounds

Section 52 of the Procurement Act 2023 requires that, for public contracts with an estimated value above 5 million pounds, the contracting authority sets and publishes at least three key performance indicators. Section 52 stops there. The duty to assess the supplier against those indicators, at least once a year and on termination, and to publish that assessment, sits in section 71, which came into force on 1 January 2026. Section 52 itself points you there. Certain contract types, such as frameworks, are exempt, and an authority can conclude that KPIs are not appropriate in specific cases.

The split matters more than it looks. Section 52 is the moment a promise is made and published; section 71 is the moment somebody checks. That is the whole shape of a modern public contract, and it is why a bid is no longer finished at award.

If you win work above that threshold, assume your delivery performance will be measured and published. That has two consequences at bid stage. First, do not promise service levels you cannot sustain, because underperformance against a published KPI is now visible to future buyers. Second, use the KPI framework to your advantage: a bid that shows you already track and report the kind of metrics the buyer will set reads as a lower-risk, more mature supplier.

Exclusion and debarment

The Act sets out mandatory and discretionary exclusion grounds, listed in its schedules, covering matters such as serious criminal convictions, tax offences, and significant past performance failures. Alongside exclusion, the Act creates a central debarment list: a minister can place a supplier on a published list, and contracting authorities must or may then exclude that supplier from procurements depending on whether the ground is mandatory or discretionary.

For most SMEs this is a compliance-hygiene matter rather than a daily worry, but it deserves attention. When you register on the Central Digital Platform and when you complete tender declarations, the exclusion questions are legal declarations, not form-filling. Answer them accurately, keep your tax affairs and company filings current, and make sure any subcontractors you rely on are not caught by an exclusion ground, because a problem in your supply chain can put your own bid at risk.

What changes day to day for an SME

Strip away the legal architecture and the practical checklist for a small bid team is short:

  • Register on the Central Digital Platform first. Do it before a live deadline forces you to, and keep your core details current so later bids reuse them.
  • Set up alerts on Find a Tender. Watch pipeline and planned procurement notices for work coming down the line, not just live tenders.
  • Read each competition’s process. Open procedure and competitive flexible procedure behave very differently, so never assume a standard shape.
  • Treat social value as scored. Under MAT, quality and social value sit inside the award test. Put effort where the published weightings are.
  • Keep exclusion declarations clean. Accurate declarations, current filings, and checked subcontractors protect your eligibility.
  • Deliver what you promised. On larger contracts, published KPIs make performance visible to future buyers.

If you want a deeper walk-through of the scored social-value element that MAT now foregrounds, our complete PPN 002 social value guide covers the framework, the themes and how buyers award marks. You may also find our procurement glossary useful for the terms that appear in tender packs.

Frequently asked questions

When did the Procurement Act 2023 come into force?

The Procurement Act 2023 went live on 24 February 2025. It applies to covered procurements started on or after that date. Procurements started under the old Public Contracts Regulations 2015 continue under those older rules until they conclude.

What is the difference between MAT and MEAT?

MEAT stood for Most Economically Advantageous Tender, the award test under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The Procurement Act 2023 replaces it with MAT, the Most Advantageous Tender. The wording drops the word economically to make clear that award can weigh wider value, including social value and quality, not just price.

Do contracting authorities have to publish KPIs?

For public contracts with an estimated value above 5 million pounds, section 52 of the Procurement Act 2023 requires the contracting authority to set and publish at least three key performance indicators. A separate duty, in section 71, requires the authority to assess performance against those indicators at least once a year and to publish that assessment. Some contract types, such as frameworks, are exempt.

Does the Procurement Act 2023 help SMEs?

Yes. Section 12 requires contracting authorities to have regard to the particular barriers small and medium enterprises may face and to consider whether those barriers can be removed or reduced. The Central Digital Platform also lets suppliers register core details once and reuse them, and 30-day payment terms are implied into public contracts and flow down the supply chain.

Note: This guide summarises the Procurement Act 2023 as it applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is general information, not legal advice. Always read the specific tender documents and the current statutory guidance for any procurement you enter, and take professional advice on exclusion, debarment or eligibility questions that affect your organisation.

Sources

Put your effort where the marks are

Under MAT, social value sits inside the award test. CrowMark helps you plan and draft a TOMs-aligned PPN 002 social value response so a scored section becomes a strength, not an afterthought.

See CrowMark → Read the PPN 002 guide →