I attended a webinar yesterday hosted by Spacehive to talk about the impact of the Procurement Act 2023 on SME's and VCFSE's coming into effect this October.
Speakers were from a number of different organisations, including procurement officers from Councils around the country, businesses and VCFSE organisations.
Some of the major changes to procurement practises that were mentioned were councils having to give many more notices of their plans, be far more transparent and the new procedures look to be competitive and flexible.
The social value weighting trajectory is set to rise and although Social Value is not mentioned in the Act itself, it is very much front and centre in the National Procurement Policy Statement. The hope is that this will create new opportunities to co-design and collaborate.
Procurement Officers under the new Act will have training, deep dives and resources to support them to authentically embed Social Value into practices in line with the new requirements of the Act. There will also be an emphasis on local needs analysis.
The speakers said that it was the greatest change in procurement in a generation, and although Social Value will very much be a factor in deciding who will get the contract, value for money may still be a large contributing factor to a successful application.
There is guidance available for suppliers:
There is guidance (Knowledge Drops) for SME's and VCFSE's:
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