PA2023 Guidance: Pipeline Notices

The Procurement Act Section 93  introduces a new obligation on all contracting authorities expecting to spend over £100m in the coming financial year on goods, services or works contracts, to publish a Pipeline Notice giving details of all such contracts that are expected to be valued at over £2m in respect of which the authority expects to publish a Tender Notice (i.e. in relation to a competitive procurement process) or Transparency Notice (i.e. in relation to a direct award without a competition).

This guidance also confirms that the current obligations around publishing pipelines as set out in The Sourcing Playbook will be met by virtue of publishing a pipeline notice under the Act.

Threshold

In terms of calculating whether the £100m threshold is met, the guidance states:

• authorities must include all relevant works, goods and services contracts;
• including below-threshold contracts and contracts called off from a framework or dynamic market; and
• take account of payments made to the supplier under existing and future contracts during this financial year.

For Frasmeworks and Dynamic Markets, there is no need to include the total value expected to go through, only the value of contracts that this Contracting Authority expects to call off itself.

Procurement Act 2023 guidance documents – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)