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What the Procurement Act 2023 changes for catering equipment suppliers

Published 21/10/2026. General information, not legal advice: always check the official notice and guidance.

The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24/02/2025. It replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and related rules for new procurements by contracting authorities, including government departments, the NHS, councils, universities, schools, social housing providers, and police and fire services. Below are the changes that matter most if you supply, install or maintain commercial catering equipment.

Which procurements it covers

  • New procurements only. Procurements started under the old rules carry on under them. Find a Tender says that if a notice was published before 24/02/2025 under earlier legislation, all later notices in that procurement follow the same legislation. Call-offs from frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems set up under the old rules also stay on the old notice types. So older catering equipment frameworks keep running on the old rules until they expire.
  • Scotland is different. Devolved Scottish authorities still follow the Scottish regulations (the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and related rules). Most Scottish council, health board and college tenders keep appearing on Public Contracts Scotland under those rules.
  • Wales applies the Act together with the Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024 for devolved Welsh authorities.

Register once on Find a Tender

Find a Tender is now the "central digital platform". It is free to use, and government guidance says you should not pay to view public-sector opportunities. Suppliers register there and store their core details once so they can reuse them across bids. You only need to register when you want to bid. Accounts from before 24/02/2025 had to re-register. According to the supplier guide, you will need:

  • your Companies House number, if you have one
  • your address, website and email
  • your last two years of accounts, if you have them
  • details of connected persons, such as people with significant control
  • information about any relevant convictions or offences

Buyers will still often run the tender itself on their own e-procurement portal.

New notices: more warning, more data

Notices now have numbers. The ones to watch are:

  • UK1 pipeline notice. Large contracting authorities (spending £100 million or more a year) must publish their contracts over £2 million planned for the next 18 months. These are published between 1 April and 26 May each year.
  • UK2 preliminary market engagement notice. If a buyer talks to the market before an above-threshold tender, it must publish this notice first, or explain in the tender notice why it did not. This is your chance to shape a kitchen specification early.
  • UK3 planned procurement notice. This notice is optional. If it is published between 40 days and one year before the tender notice, the minimum tendering period can drop to 10 days, so have your documents ready.
  • UK4 tender notice. The advert itself. The normal minimum period above threshold is 25 days, where bids are submitted electronically and all documents are provided.
  • UK5 transparency notice, published before a direct award.
  • UK6 contract award notice, published before the contract is signed.
  • UK7 contract details notice, published after signature. Above threshold it is due within 30 days of signature. For contracts over £5 million the contract document must be published too.
  • UK9 to UK12 report performance against KPIs, contract changes (for example extensions), contract termination and cancelled procurements. UK13 to UK16 cover dynamic markets, and UK17 covers payment performance.

Linked notices share one procurement identifier (OCID), so you can follow a kitchen contract from pipeline to termination. KitchenTenders shows UK1 to UK3 notices as coming soon and uses contract end dates from award and contract details notices for contracts ending soon.

Procedures, feedback and standstill

  • Two competitive procedures. Above threshold, buyers use either the open procedure or the new competitive flexible procedure. The flexible procedure lets the buyer design its own stages, which may include negotiation, demonstrations or site visits.
  • Assessment summaries. Before publishing a UK6 contract award notice, the buyer must give every supplier whose tender was assessed a summary of how its tender was scored. Where they differ, the summary also covers the winning tender.
  • Standstill. Publishing the UK6 notice starts a mandatory standstill of at least eight working days before the contract can be signed (section 51). Some awards are exempt, including framework call-offs, dynamic market awards and light-touch contracts.
  • Frameworks can be "open", so suppliers are not shut out for the whole term. Under the Act, dynamic markets let suppliers join over time.

Below-threshold work

Much catering equipment work is low value. For a "notifiable below-threshold contract" (from £12,000 for central government and from £30,000 for other authorities), a buyer that advertises the opportunity must first publish a tender notice on Find a Tender. It must also publish a contract details notice after the award. When a buyer invites tenders for these contracts, it cannot run a separate suitability stage first, so you should not get a pre-qualification round. Schools and some other bodies are exempt from these below-threshold notices.

Payment and oversight

The Act extends 30-day payment terms to more public-sector contracts and the supply chains beneath them. A new Procurement Review Unit oversees public procurement. It is made up of the Public Procurement Review Service, a Procurement Compliance Service and a Debarment Review Service. Suppliers can use the Public Procurement Review Service to raise concerns about a specific procurement or about late payment.

A practical checklist

  1. Register your organisation on Find a Tender and keep your details current.
  2. Set saved searches for catering equipment CPV codes and kitchen keywords (see how to find UK catering equipment tenders).
  3. Respond to UK2 market engagement where you can, and treat any UK3 as a sign that the tender may be short.
  4. Read every UK6 assessment summary, win or lose.
  5. Track UK7 contract end dates and UK10 extensions to plan for re-tenders. Our sector pages and daily log do this from the official data.

Sources

  1. GOV.UK: Transforming Public Procurement (commencement on 24 February 2025)
  2. GOV.UK: The Procurement Act 2023, a short guide for suppliers
  3. Find a Tender: notice types and sequences
  4. GOV.UK: Guidance: planned procurement notice
  5. GOV.UK: Guidance: competitive tendering procedures
  6. GOV.UK: Guidance: below-threshold contracts
  7. legislation.gov.uk: Procurement Act 2023, section 51 (standstill periods)
  8. legislation.gov.uk: Procurement Act 2023, section 119 (Scottish regulations)
  9. legislation.gov.uk: The Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024

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