With the Procurement Act 2023 now in force since February, local authorities across the UK are navigating a new era of public procurement. The legislation has not only redefined how councils buy goods and services but has also unlocked a more agile, outcomes-focused, and socially driven approach to contracting. The reforms aim to move procurement beyond compliance—toward a strategic lever for public value.
Early adopters have begun embedding these changes into their internal processes, using the Act’s flexibility to design procurement routes that better reflect the real-world challenges they face. As implementation matures, local authorities are focusing on how to sustain this momentum—streamlining procedures, improving supplier engagement, and ensuring every contract delivers maximum community impact.
To support this shift, many councils are turning to digital platforms like Delta eSourcing. These tools are helping operationalise the new rules, standardise good practice, and give teams the visibility and control they need to deliver on the Act’s ambitious goals.
Discover how Delta eSourcing can help your authority put these reforms into practice—book a free demo today.
The New Era of Local Government Procurement
The Procurement Act 2023 marks a transformative moment for public sector procurement, ushering in a new era defined by simplicity, flexibility, and a renewed focus on value for money. By streamlining procurement processes and introducing the Competitive Flexible Procedure (CFP), the Act empowers contracting authorities with greater freedom to design procurement practices that truly meet their unique needs. This shift moves local government procurement away from rigid, prescriptive models and towards more agile, outcome-driven processes. As a result, public sector buyers can deliver better value for taxpayers, foster innovation, and ensure that procurement activities are both efficient and effective. The new framework sets the stage for smarter, more responsive procurement—helping authorities achieve their goals while upholding the highest standards of public service.
From Complexity to Clarity: What the Act Has Changed
The Procurement Act 2023 has simplified the procurement framework, replacing the old EU-derived system with just two core procedures: the Open Procedure and the Competitive Flexible Procedure (CFP). This shift gives local authorities the freedom to break away from a one-size-fits-all model and instead design processes that reflect the specific challenges, risks, and ambitions tied to each procurement.
The CFP, in particular, stands out as a tool for customisation. It empowers councils to build bespoke qualification stages, design multi-phase evaluations, and apply nuanced criteria to shortlist or progress bidders—while still ensuring fairness and transparency. The key principles of procurement, including equal treatment, non-discrimination, and transparency, must be adhered to throughout the process. Clear award criteria and selection criteria are essential to ensure objective and compliant decision-making. This procedural flexibility is critical for complex procurements or high-value contracts, where innovation, market engagement, or supplier diversity are essential to success.
The Act also makes it easier for the contracting authority to modify contracts mid-term where necessary, without triggering re-procurement—provided the changes remain within scope. This added agility allows for responsive contract management in dynamic environments, from housing to social care. Coupled with strengthened transparency obligations and clearer guidelines, the new rules provide councils with a practical toolkit for tailoring procurement to meet local priorities and community expectations.
Tendering and Contracting: Building Stronger Foundations
The introduction of the Competitive Flexible Procedure (CFP) has revolutionized the procurement process for contracting authorities. Unlike traditional, one-size-fits-all approaches, the CFP is a competitive tendering procedure that allows buyers to tailor procurement processes to the specific demands of each contract. This flexibility means that procurement can now take into account a broader range of factors, such as social value, innovative solutions, and sustainability, alongside price. By designing procurement processes that reflect the complexity and objectives of each project, contracting authorities can ensure that every procurement process is robust, transparent, and focused on delivering true value for money. This approach not only strengthens the foundations of public sector procurement but also supports the delivery of better outcomes for communities.
Early Market Engagement as Standard Practice
One of the most transformative shifts has been the legitimisation—and active encouragement—of early market engagement. Under the new regime, councils are no longer hesitant to involve suppliers early in the process. Instead, they’re empowered to consult the market before tenders go live, helping to refine technical specifications, uncover innovative solutions, and anticipate delivery challenges in advance.
Early engagement is also critical in expanding the supplier base, especially for contracts aimed at SMEs or social enterprises. Attracting a more diverse range of suppliers, including medium sized enterprises and smaller suppliers, helps foster competition and innovation. By initiating two-way conversations before formal procurement begins, councils can better understand supplier capabilities and constraints—leading to more relevant tenders and stronger bid responses. Early engagement also allows councils to identify procurement opportunities and engage potential suppliers, ensuring a diverse range of organisations are aware of and able to participate in upcoming tenders.
Delta eSourcing supports this evolution with built-in tools for Requests for Information (RFIs), pre-market consultation surveys, supplier workshops, and engagement tracking—all while maintaining full transparency and a clear audit trail. These features ensure that early engagement is structured, inclusive, and compliant. What was once a cautious exception is now an embedded best practice that enhances both quality and value across procurement cycles.
Find out how Delta enables structured, compliant early engagement—speak to a procurement expert.
Central and Local Government Collaboration: Unlocking Collective Value
The Procurement Act 2023 places a strong emphasis on collaboration between central and local government, recognizing that working together can unlock significant collective value. By sharing best practices, expertise, and resources, contracting authorities can drive more effective procurement practices across the public sector. Collaborative approaches—such as the use of framework agreements and joint procurement initiatives—enable authorities to pool their purchasing power, streamline procurement activities, and achieve greater efficiencies. This spirit of cooperation helps to overcome common challenges, reduce duplication, and ensure that procurement delivers the best possible outcomes for taxpayers. Ultimately, the Act encourages a more unified approach to public procurement, where collective action leads to smarter, more impactful procurement decisions.
Making Innovation Happen with Digital Support
Procurement reform enables innovation, but digital infrastructure makes it scalable, repeatable, and auditable. To capitalise on the flexibility offered by the Procurement Act, local authorities need tools that support dynamic design and robust execution—precisely where Delta eSourcing adds value.
With Delta, procurement teams can:
- Build and manage complex, multi-phase procurement workflows, each with its own criteria and evaluation logic
- Seamlessly adjust evaluation methods and scoring models across different stages, allowing for evolving priorities or findings from earlier phases
- Publish compliant notices to Find a Tender and Contracts Finder, including the tender notice and associated tender documents, with automatic formatting and built-in validation to reduce errors and rework
Delta supports the participation stage by enabling authorities to invite suppliers, ensure suppliers meet minimum criteria, and streamline the process for both buyers and suppliers.
Delta’s reach is equally powerful: the platform connects councils with over 100,000 registered suppliers, including a wide mix of SMEs, voluntary organisations, and specialist providers. This broad pool increases competition, drives innovation, and helps deliver greater social value by engaging key suppliers and supporting a diverse supply chain and supply chains.
The platform’s analytics dashboard is another cornerstone—providing visibility into supplier performance history, category benchmarks, and pipeline insights. Procurement teams can use this intelligence to design more commercially viable tenders, assess risk more accurately, and align contract goals with strategic outcomes. The dashboard also supports evaluating bids and generating an assessment summary, promoting transparency and accountability throughout both the procurement process and supplier selection.
Digital tools like Delta can also facilitate site visits as part of both the procurement process and the evaluation of innovative goods, encouraging innovation and supporting robust supplier assessment.
In the context of supplier engagement, buyers decide whether to participate based on relevant information provided in the tender documents, ensuring informed and competitive procurement. In short, Delta makes it possible to innovate with control and confidence.
Delivering and Tracking Social Value
Social value has moved from an aspirational add-on to a formal requirement under the new regime. Councils must now apply a minimum 10% evaluation weighting for social value, and Delta gives them the tools to make that real.
With Delta, buyers can:
- Add social value questions and scoring into tender templates
- Evaluate and compare community outcomes alongside cost and quality, while providing relevant information to suppliers to ensure transparency in the evaluation process
- Track delivery of promises through contract KPIs
The Contract Management module provides a clear framework for monitoring outcomes—whether it’s jobs created, carbon savings, or local SME engagement.
Explore Delta’s full feature set in action—book your personalised demo.
Built-in Compliance for a New Regulatory Era
The Procurement Act mandates greater transparency and accountability than ever before. Delta supports compliance automatically:
- Every procurement action is logged with a secure audit trail
- Required notices and documentation, including the qualifying planned procurement notice, are integrated into workflows
- Performance and contract data can be reported on with ease
Robust procurement policies and a clear procurement strategy are essential for ensuring compliance with legal frameworks, transparency, and operational efficiency. The government commercial function and the Cabinet Office play a key role in setting standards and overseeing procurement regulations, providing guidance to ensure best practices across public sector procurement.
This helps councils avoid missteps, demonstrate due diligence, and build trust with auditors and stakeholders.
Risk Management and Monitoring: Safeguarding Public Interest
Robust risk management and ongoing monitoring are essential to the integrity of the procurement process. Contracting authorities must have effective systems in place to identify, assess, and mitigate risks throughout the procurement lifecycle. This includes ensuring compliance with procurement regulations, closely monitoring supplier performance, and tracking contract delivery to safeguard public money. By proactively managing risks, authorities can prevent procurement failures, maintain high ethical standards, and ensure that every procurement process delivers on its intended objectives. Strong risk controls not only protect the public interest but also build trust in the procurement process, ensuring that suppliers and stakeholders are treated fairly and transparently.
Real-World ROI: More Value, Less Waste
Councils are under pressure to do more with less—and Delta helps meet that challenge. Its automation features cut administrative burden, while real-time data helps optimise specifications and enhance competition. Offering smaller contracts can help smaller suppliers participate in procurement, building their capacity and increasing market diversity.
The result? Faster procurements, better supplier fit, and stronger value-for-money outcomes, achieving best value and complying with the EU threshold where applicable. Councils using Delta report improved efficiency, more competitive tenders, and better strategic oversight across their portfolio. The contracting authority considers the appropriate tendering period or tendering periods, especially in competitive tendering procedures involving pre-selected suppliers or only pre-selected suppliers, to ensure compliance and efficiency.
Start your journey today—book a demo
Continuous Improvement and Evaluation: Raising the Bar
Continuous improvement is at the heart of the Procurement Act 2023, with contracting authorities encouraged to regularly review and refine their procurement processes. By evaluating procurement strategies, assessing supplier performance, and gathering feedback from stakeholders, authorities can identify opportunities to optimize value for money and drive innovation. The use of data analytics and other evaluation tools supports evidence-based procurement decisions, helping to raise the bar for efficiency and effectiveness across the public sector. This commitment to ongoing improvement ensures that procurement processes remain fit for purpose, responsive to changing needs, and capable of delivering the best possible outcomes for communities. By embedding a culture of evaluation and learning, contracting authorities can lead the way in modern, high-performing public procurement.
What’s Next for Local Government Procurement?
Procurement is no longer just about ticking compliance boxes—it’s about creating long-term community impact through more strategic, transparent, and responsive processes. The Procurement Act 2023 sets the vision by embedding flexibility, innovation, and social value into the heart of public contracting. Delta eSourcing provides the means to implement that vision effectively.
As the new regime becomes business-as-usual, forward-thinking councils are setting themselves apart by using digital platforms to reframe procurement as a tool for local development. Whether it’s enabling more inclusive supplier participation, streamlining complex tenders, or capturing social outcomes with greater accuracy, technology is turning policy into practice.
Delta stands ready to support this transformation. With end-to-end tools for every stage of the procurement lifecycle, our platform helps local authorities operationalise reform, ensure compliance, and maximise community value.
To explore how Delta eSourcing can support your team in delivering on the promise of procurement reform, book a free demo or speak to one of our local government experts today.
