Action Sustainability - Assessing the Procurement Act 2023

 We had a very interesting online conference yesterday, hosted by Action Sustainability.  It had quite a Welsh flavour with the speakers being Robert Vaughn of the Department of Transport, Carl Thomas of the Welsh government and Diane Brooks of Lyreco Wales.  I was the warm up act, doing PA2023 in 20 minutes (never mind the 630 pages of guidance, eh?  20 mins?  Sure I didnt miss TOO much out...)

Action Sustainability will be making a recording available at some point (as I said, I'm on first so you can skip to the 30 minute mark to hear the real practitioners talking).

There was a strong focus on SMEs during the presentations, which is a favourite topic of mine.

We had some good questions from the 600 attendees (well not all of them).

One made the very good point that the designation SME covers a broad range of businesses, and that a company with 230 employees is a very very different entity to one with 23, (or particularly 2 or 3).  I have some hopes that the flexibility in the PA2023 for the lowest value contracts (below £30k or £12k inc VAT, depending on the contracting body) will allow Contracting Authorities to tap into the pool of Small and Micro businesses.  But of course that is not guaranteed.

Another point was about ethics, and as we had delegates from all four nations it is probably useful to point out that as well as the national Procurement Review Unit, there is Wales PRU, a Scottish Single point of enquiry, and Northern Ireland Construction & Procurement delivery teams covering devolved procurements.  

One delegate was concerned about ethical breaches in the construction industry, which of course had a significant Cartel case in the 2000s.  Their point was that offenders aren't seen as suffering the consequences, and of course the consequences are being beefed up in the PA2023.  Another delegate pointed out that whistleblowers in the industry are at risk of blacklisting, which of course is not legal but may still occur.  They were asking if the PRU would protect whistleblowers.  There is government guidance on whistleblowing here.  It is not clear to me if referrals to the PRU can be anonymous, but I'll try and check.

And finally of course we reminded everyone about the new consultation about potential changes - https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/public-procurement-growing-british-industry-jobs-and-skills-consultation-on-further-reforms-to-public-procurement

Deadline 5th September 2025.