With the Transition Period ending on 31st December 2020, the UK has taken a positive action to review potential changes in procurement, which is being described as an historic opportunity to overhaul our outdated public procurement regime within the Government’s recent Green Paper, which can be found here.
With amended legislation and systems to ensure the smooth changeover, the UK’s new ‘Find a Tender’ service (FTS) launched on 1st January 2021, replacing publication to the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) via Tenders Electronic Daily (TED). As such, this new service, which has not been widely promoted, is now the main public search portal for high value procurement, alongside Contracts Finder.
This key change affects both public sector Buyers and Suppliers, as any new procurement notices must now be published to this platform in line with The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, which still governs UK procurement.
Find a Tender can be used to search for high-value opportunities or awarded contracts, typically over £122,976 but varying in some cases, across the whole of the UK.
Requirements to publish on other platforms remain unchanged, where information on contracts over £10,000 (or £25,000 outside central government) can be found on:
The government has provided further guidance and support to the introduction of the new platform, which details what changes are in place, how this may affect your business and further instructions on how to register, publish and search for contracts. This Procurement Policy Note can be found here.