Winning Public Contracts Under the Procurement Act: A Guide for Small Suppliers

The UK public sector spends around £385 billion a year buying goods, services and works. For a small business, even a sliver of that can be transformative — but public procurement has a reputation for paperwork, jargon and tenders that seem written with large incumbents in mind.

The Procurement Act 2023, which went live on 24 February 2025, was meant to change that. Eighteen months on, and with a fresh round of updates in 2026, many smaller suppliers are still unsure what it means for them. This is a plain-English overview, written for general interest — not legal advice — of what has changed and where the opportunities are.

What Changed, in Brief

The Act replaced the old EU-derived rules (the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and their sister regulations) for procurements that started on or after 24 February 2025. Anything already under way before then continues under the old rules until it finishes. The new regime covers public bodies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, plus UK-wide bodies; devolved Scottish authorities generally keep their own regulations.

The headline changes for suppliers are a single digital platform for registration and notices, more flexible tender procedures, much more published information, and explicit duties to consider the barriers small businesses face. The government's short guide for suppliers is a good starting point.

Step One: Register on the Central Digital Platform

Under the Act, suppliers share their details through the Central Digital Platform rather than filling in the same questionnaire for every tender. In outline:

1. Create a GOV.UK One Login account.
2. Register your organisation. Your Companies House number becomes your identifier, and you appoint an administrator.
3. Complete your core supplier information — basic details, connected persons, qualifications, trade assurances, exclusions and financial information.
4. Generate a share code and enter it in the buyer's tender portal when you bid.

It is free. The official guidance is explicit that suppliers should not pay to view opportunities, so be wary of services that charge for access to notices you can get at no cost. For above-threshold competitions, your information must be on the platform before the tender deadline, and since 1 April 2026 winners of smaller notifiable contracts also need a basic registration before the contract is published. The sensible approach is to register before you need to, and keep it up to date — a rushed registration the night before a deadline is nobody's idea of fun. GOV.UK has a step-by-step registration guide.

Finding Opportunities

All notices under the new regime — above and below threshold — are published first on Find a Tender, the public face of the platform, where you can set up free alerts. Buyers may also repost on their own portals, but Find a Tender is the one place everything should appear. For new procurements, it has taken over the role Contracts Finder used to play for smaller contracts.

One feature worth knowing about is the pipeline notice. Public bodies expecting to spend more than £100 million in a financial year must publish details of contracts worth over £2 million that they plan to tender in the next 18 months. For a smaller business looking to subcontract or partner on larger bids, those notices are an early-warning system.

Why Contract Value Matters

The rules depend on whether a contract is above or below set thresholds. These are revised every two years, and new values took effect on 1 January 2026. Including VAT, the main ones are:

• Goods and services, central government: £135,018
• Goods and services, other public bodies (such as councils): £207,720
• Works: £5,193,000

Below those figures, a lighter regime applies, and it is where many small businesses will find their first public contracts. If a central government body (including NHS trusts) advertises a contract worth £12,000 or more, or another public body advertises one worth £30,000 or more, it must publish a notice on the platform. Importantly, for most of these below-threshold contracts buyers cannot use a pre-qualification or suitability stage to filter suppliers out before they bid — one of the old barriers small firms used to complain about. Public bodies can also choose to reserve below-threshold competitions for small businesses and voluntary organisations, and since February 2026 councils in England can reserve them for local or UK-based suppliers. The threshold policy note and the below-threshold guidance have the detail.

How Tenders Are Run and Judged

Buyers now choose between an open procedure — a single stage where anyone can bid — and a competitive flexible procedure, which they design themselves and which can include shortlisting, negotiation or product demonstrations. Read the tender documents carefully: with a flexible procedure, no two processes need look the same.

Contracts are awarded to the “most advantageous tender” — the bid that best meets the published award criteria and weightings. Price matters, but it is rarely the only factor, and the weightings tell you exactly where the marks are. Every bidder who submits a final tender receives an assessment summary explaining how it scored, which is worth reading closely whether you win or lose.

Social value is becoming more prominent too. A new social value model, focused on “good British jobs, skills and opportunities”, will apply to central government procurements of £1 million or more that start from 1 January 2027, with a minimum weighting of 10% (20% for contracts of £5 million and above). See PPN 026.

Getting Paid on Time

Cash flow is where public work has historically hurt small suppliers most, and the Act goes further than before:

• 30-day payment terms are written into public contracts for valid, undisputed invoices — and they flow down the supply chain to subcontracts, which matters if you supply a main contractor rather than the public body directly.
• Payment performance is now public. Since 1 January 2026, public bodies publish how quickly they pay invoices every six months, and for procurements started from 1 April 2026, individual payments over £30,000 are published quarterly.
• Big bidders must show they pay promptly. Suppliers bidding for central government contracts worth over £5 million a year must show they pay their own supply chain within an average of 45 days.

Keep Your House in Order

The Act sets out mandatory and discretionary grounds for excluding suppliers — from fraud and bribery to serious breaches of contract and poor performance — and buyers can look at connected persons and intended subcontractors as well as the bidder itself. There is also a central debarment list. For most small businesses this is reassurance rather than a worry, but it is a reason to keep accurate records, answer the platform's questions honestly, and update your information when something changes.

The Small Business Angle

The Act requires public bodies to have regard to the barriers small and medium-sized enterprises face and to consider whether they can be reduced, and buyers must consider splitting larger contracts into lots. Central government departments have also set new direct spending targets with small businesses, which the government expects to deliver more than £7.4 billion a year by 2028.

For context, the most recent official whole-government figures, for 2021–22, found that 26.5% of central government procurement spend reached SMEs — 12.3% directly and 14.1% through supply chains. That second number is a useful reminder: for many small firms, the first step into public work is supplying a larger contractor rather than bidding alone.

A Short Checklist for Getting Started

• Register on the Central Digital Platform now, and keep your information current.
• Set up free alerts on Find a Tender for your sector and region.
• Watch pipeline notices for larger contracts you could support as a subcontractor.
• Start with below-threshold opportunities, where there is no pre-qualification stage to clear.
• Read the award criteria and weightings before writing a word of your bid.
• Ask for, and learn from, your assessment summary every time.
• Use the free official supplier guidance — you should not need to pay anyone just to find opportunities.

Our Take

Public-sector work is rarely quick to win, and the Act has not made tendering effortless. But it has made the system more open, more transparent and, in places, genuinely friendlier to smaller suppliers — particularly below threshold, where the old pre-qualification hurdle has largely gone and payment terms are now written in. For a small business willing to register early, read the documents carefully and build up from smaller contracts, the door is wider open than it was.