When we last wrote about the Procurement Act 2023, it had only just replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, and most of the discussion focused on what the new rules might mean in practice. The Act came into force on 24 February 2025, so we now have more than 18 months of real procurements to learn from. The last of its provisions also came into force earlier this year.
The early verdict from across the public sector is fairly consistent. The Act has certainly made procurement more transparent. Whether it has made it simpler is a different question. For colleges and academy trusts there is an added layer, because the education sector benefits from some specific exemptions that are often misunderstood in both directions.
In this piece, we look at what has changed in practice, what has caught people out, and what that means for anyone planning an IT procurement in the years ahead.
First, a reminder about the schools exemption
The Act defines a “school” more broadly than you might expect. As well as maintained schools, it covers academy trusts and further education sector institutions, so most colleges and academy trusts benefit from the same exemptions.
Those exemptions mainly cover reporting on payments and the rules for below-threshold contracts. This year that has become more relevant, because two new transparency duties came into force for the wider public sector:
- Payment compliance notices, reporting on how many invoices were paid within 30 days, required twice a year from January 2026.
- Payment information notices, publishing details of every payment over £30,000 made under a public contract, required quarterly from April 2026.
Neither applies to contracts awarded by a school as defined in the Act. If you’ve seen these described in sector briefings or been asked about them by a supplier, it’s worth checking your position rather than assuming you need to comply.
The exemption works in the other direction too, and this is where I see more risk. It does not take colleges and trusts out of the Act for above-threshold procurements. Everything else applies in full, including the contract performance duties that also started in January 2026. The exemption from below-threshold rules also doesn’t remove the requirements of your own financial regulations, the Academy Trust Handbook or your funding agreement, all of which still expect value for money and proper competition.
What hasn’t changed as much as expected
For all the talk of flexibility, most day-to-day procurements look quite similar to how they did before. Frameworks remain the main route to market for most IT requirements in education, and that seems unlikely to change. They are familiar, they reduce the procurement burden and, used properly, they still deliver good value.
The new Competitive Flexible Procedure has been used more cautiously than some predicted. It allows authorities to design a process that fits the requirement, with negotiation, demonstrations or staged down-selection built in. That is genuinely useful for complex IT requirements, such as a new MIS or a large managed service, where seeing the solution in operation can matter more than reading about it. However, it requires confidence and good documentation to use well, and many organisations have understandably stuck with what they know for routine purchases.
We think this is a shame because using the Act rather than a framework often gives you much better access to potential suppliers and frequently yields a more competitive price. Frameworks have a cost to run them, and this cost must be picked up somewhere. Commonly, the supplier will bear this cost, and it would be naive to think that they don’t seek to recoup this from their customers down the line.
For more complex scenarios, the pre-market engagement using a UK2 notice on Find-A-Tender will give broader access to the market than a framework in most cases, as there are a large number of potential suppliers who don’t engage with frameworks due to the cost. This is one of the reasons that there are often complaints from Trusts and Colleges about “seeing the same old faces”.
With the right support, running a Competitive Flexible Procedure can be no more complex than running against a framework correctly, with the possible exception that, where a contract is required at the end, there is no pre-existing documentation. That said, there is no shortage of examples of model contracts for all manner of requirements, so even here there isn’t much more to do.
What has caught people out
Assessment summaries. Under the Act, every supplier that submits a tender in a covered procurement must receive an assessment summary before the contract award notice is published. In practice, this is considerably more work than the award letters many organisations used to send. It needs to explain how the supplier’s tender was assessed against each criterion and, where relevant, how it compared with the winning tender. Authorities also need to keep records sufficient to explain every material decision in the procurement.
In my experience, the scoring itself is rarely the problem. The weakness is usually in the written justification, particularly for technical criteria scored by several evaluators. Moderation notes that simply record an agreed score, without explaining why, make the assessment summary much harder to write and much harder to defend if challenged. We always ask evaluators to mark on their scoring any time a score is higher or lower than the average score so that we have a contemporaneous record of their thinking. This also helps in moderation to spot cases where evaluators may have either seen something missed by others or equally misinterpreted a response to a given requirement.
Of course, providing detailed feedback to unsuccessful (and sometimes successful) bidders has long been good practice, so although technically a new requirement, if you were already following those best practices the step isn’t a big one.
The number of notices. The Act introduced a much more detailed notice regime, all published through the central digital platform on Find a Tender. Depending on the procurement, this can include preliminary market engagement notices, tender notices, transparency notices, contract award notices, contract details notices, contract change notices and termination notices. Each has its own timing requirements. For organisations that only run a handful of above-threshold procurements a year, it’s easy to miss one, especially at the end of a contract when attention has moved elsewhere.
Checking the debarment list. Contracting authorities must check the central debarment list as part of every procurement. At the one-year mark the list was still empty, which makes it easy to treat the check as a formality and then forget it. It’s a small step, but it needs to be built into your procurement checklist so that it happens and is recorded every time.
KPIs and performance reporting. For contracts worth more than £5 million, authorities must set and publish at least three key performance indicators. Since January 2026, they must also assess the supplier’s performance against them at least once a year and when the contract ends, and publish the results. Separately, where a supplier breaches a contract in a way that leads to termination, damages or a settlement, or fails to improve after being given the opportunity, the authority must publish details within 30 days. That information can then be used to exclude the supplier from future procurements.
The £5 million threshold may sound high, but it is based on the whole-life value of the contract including VAT. A five-year managed IT service, a multi-site network refresh, a print and MFD contract or a new MIS can reach it more easily than you might expect, particularly for larger colleges and trusts. The practical lesson is to think about KPIs at the specification stage rather than after award. They need to measure what actually matters to the organisation, be measurable from data you will genuinely have, and be robust enough to publish. As we noted in our recent article on IT support standards, it’s easy to set measures that a supplier can meet on paper while the service still falls short. Once again though, organisations following best practices will already have built in KPIs and contract monitoring to larger contracts, so the extra reporting is limited extra overhead.
Contract changes. IT contracts tend to grow. Licence numbers increase, sites are added, and new modules or services are bolted on. Under the Act, many of these changes require a contract change notice, and some may not be permitted at all without a new procurement. The best protection is to build likely changes into the original procurement as clearly defined options, such as additional licences, further sites, extension periods or optional services, so that taking them up later is straightforward.
Thresholds and contract values. Procurement thresholds are VAT-inclusive, and the values changed again on 1 January 2026, reducing for most contract types, as we covered in our thresholds article. Getting the estimated value right at the outset matters, as it determines which rules apply. For IT contracts, that means including the full term, any extension options, support and maintenance, and realistic growth.
Below threshold: the exemption isn’t a free pass
Because the below-threshold provisions of the Act don’t apply to schools, colleges and academy trusts have more freedom for lower-value purchases than much of the public sector. That freedom is valuable, but it isn’t a reason to skip competition.
The area where I most often see risk is renewals. Software subscriptions, support contracts and licences are often renewed year after year without any review, because each renewal is individually below the relevant threshold or internal limit. Over time, the organisation can end up locked into arrangements that would never survive a proper value for money test. A good contracts register, which the DfE digital and technology standards already expect you to keep, is the simplest way to spot these early and plan properly for the ones that matter. This approach also prevents the “we’ve left it too late to do procurement” excuse favoured by many an IT team.
Practical lessons for IT procurement
Pulling this together, here is what I’d suggest for anyone planning an IT procurement in the coming year:
- Start earlier than you think you need to. Market engagement, notice periods, assessment summaries and standstill (now a minimum of eight working days) all add time, particularly where governance approvals are needed at several stages.
- Engage the market properly. Preliminary market engagement is encouraged under the Act, and for IT it’s often the best way to understand what is realistic, what it will cost and how to write a specification suppliers can respond to well.
- Write evaluation criteria you can explain. If you can’t easily explain why one response scored higher than another, the criteria or the scoring guidance probably need more work.
- Design KPIs and options at the specification stage. Both are much harder to add once the contract is signed.
- Keep good records throughout. Assume that every material decision may need to be explained to an unsuccessful bidder, a court or an auditor.
- Use frameworks well. Check the framework’s own call-off rules carefully and remember that above-threshold call-offs still carry notice obligations.
- Invest in training. The Cabinet Office learning materials and the DfE’s guidance for schools and trusts are free and worth working through, particularly for staff who only run occasional procurements.
Final thoughts
The Procurement Act hasn’t transformed how most colleges and academy trusts buy IT. Frameworks still dominate, and many procedures look familiar. What it has changed is the level of transparency and the standard of record-keeping expected throughout the process, from planning through to the end of the contract. For organisations that run larger procurements only occasionally, the challenge is less about the law itself and more about having the capacity and confidence to apply it well when the time comes or to know where to go for help.
If you’re planning an IT procurement and would like support with the process, from market engagement and specification through to evaluation, contract award and long-term contract management, please get in touch.
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