Procurement and Brexit: What’s happening?
What's happening with procurement and Brexit? We get asked this a lot! Here's some updates.
With the UK now out of the EU, many steps have been taken to make sure processes can be kept ‘in house’. So, from the 1st January 2021, a whole new way of doing things will come into play when it comes to procurement and brexit.
There’s already been a lot that’s happened in the world of procurement in 2020, but here’s what you need to know about 1st January onwards!
What do Buyers need to do?
For government Buyers, the steps of the process may seem very similar. There’s still the same number of things they have to do, and still regulations and procedures they have to adhere.
The biggest change of all, is that the Official Journal of the European Union (or OJEU for short) will be replaced. Public sector buyers will now have to publish their high value contracts to a new platform: Find a Tender.
Find a Tender will work in a similar way to Contracts Finder. Where Contracts Finder works for those posting any opportunity and contract – and suppliers are required to post here for any contract, Find a Tender will be for tenders over the given threshold only. We still expect this to be around £122,976 for Central Government, and £189,330 for other contracting authorities. As was given for OJEU.
What happens for suppliers?
Not much in terms of processes. However, from 1st January 2021, suppliers will have to use Find a Tender to view all public sector opportunities. It will replace Tender Electronics Daily (TED) as the place to go to view any notices of high value UK procurements – including any frameworks or DPSs. So there will be no more looking out for the publication of an OJEU when you want a framework to open, it’ll be whether it has been posted to Find a Tender!
The new platform will also give the option to sign up for email updates and save your searches, hopefully making things a bit easier for staying in the know.
For anything low value and under threshold, suppliers will still be able to use Contracts Finder as normal.
These are just the big changes so far that we know will be happening when it comes to procurement and Brexit. There are still some big changes to come when it comes to contracts and legalities of procurement processes, so keep your eyes peeled. However, for 1st January 2021 and onwards, suppliers and buyers have some new ways of working to put into practice!
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