As 5.30 pm on Friday 21 February 2025 beckons, councils and other contracting authorities are busy as they seek to launch their last contract or concession notice under the current legal regime. Elsewhere, procurement processes will be launched in a hurry that their promoters will seek to put right, through clarifications and extensions of time to bid. There will also be places where for a variety of internal reasons (like half term) the scope of the procurement is not yet finally nailed to the extent necessary and the draft procurement documents will have to be re-cast to embrace the Procurement Act 2023 (PA 23). There may also be Regulation 12 contracts or some direct awards to put to bed by midnight on 23 February 2025.

Soon this moment will pass, and we will be in the new world of implementing pipelines for projects under the PA 23, whilst seeing through all the procurement exercises launched but not finished in recent months. This double existence of a procurement professional could last quite a while, with Regulation 72 alive and kicking for contracts with plenty of duration left.

I fondly remember applying the Public Works Contract Regulations 1991, the Public Supply Contracts Regulations 1991 and the Public Services Contracts Regulations 1993 (when things seemed much simpler). I have been trying to adapt the words of 'My Way’ to the soon-to-be-replaced public procurement regime.

But the truth is that with the PA 23, we’ll be singing ‘I’ll do it my way’. We’ll still be advising how to comply, but not necessarily to conform. We will be searching for those opportunities to create better outcomes in the liminal spaces left by the functional drafting of the PA 23. If you want innovation, it’s not just in what is commissioned and delivered. It will be in ‘the way I do it’ (uh-huh, uh-huh). So, let’s do it, comrades, the very best we can.

For more information

For more information or advice on the new regime, please contact me.