Beyond Go Live PA23: The Continuing Struggles of Procurement Act Implementation

Procurement systems that don’t record end-to-end lifecycle, decisions improperly recorded on emails, incomplete contract registers, non-compliant spend, multiple low value purchases, no way to track spend fluctuations, under-resourced teams: Just a few of the joys of year one of the Procurement Act 2023.

If you are a Section 151 officer, a Head of Procurement, or a senior commercial lead, you probably had a mixture of feelings on 24 February 2025. It probably wasn’t relief that “go live” had finally arrived. More likely a quiet realisation that go live was just the start, and highly likely that you were going to need increased resource to deliver the Act’s requirements. The Act did not just change process, it increased workload through increased transparency, end to end regime, with more information to publish, more decisions to evidence, and more records to keep.

With multiple supplier challenges already having been upheld in year one, “readiness” is less about knowing what the Act says, and more about whether everyday practice is defensible: can you show, quickly and coherently, what you did, why you did it, and where it is recorded? That is where teams can feel strain. The strain sits between notices, registers, payments and records. Ensuring there is a comprehensive audit trail is an operational challenge.

Add in the fact that many of the multiple systems utilised don’t talk to each other and that few procurement systems genuinely capture the end-to-end procurement lifecycle from commissioning to contract termination, and the pressure on procurement teams only increases.

Why year one still feels hard

In practice, year one still feels hard for structural reasons that go well beyond “this is the way we’ve always done it”.

Transparency obligations are now more visible, more structured and more demanding, extending well beyond award and leaving contract management far more exposed. Official training material describes the shift plainly: notice publication requirements run through the procurement lifecycle and include the contract management phase. This matters because it moves “procurement compliance” into the lived realities of mobilisation, performance management, contract change and payment.

The practical impact of this is that procurement teams must have reach beyond the initial commissioning and tender stages. They need to develop strong working relationships with delivery teams, contract management functions, and closer alignment with finance and legal.

The guidance is still being refreshed. The Cabinet Office’s Procurement Act guidance suite has been updated as recently as 4 February 2026. That is helpful, but it also signals that teams are still calibrating templates, workflows and system configurations.

Transition creates a dual regime world. Official transitional guidance says procurements commenced after the Act came into force follow the Act, while procurements commenced under previous regimes continue to be procured and managed under those regimes. Most, if not all organisations will have some procurements under the old rules and some under the new. That alone increases the risk of process drift, especially where people rotate roles or service teams run low value activity using older habits.

The uncomfortable governance point is that none of this is solved by training alone. Training is necessary, but the work is operational: who owns which duties, how data flows between systems, often still manually, and whether records are maintained in a way that allows evidence to be retrieved quickly and coherently.

Transparency duties in practice: notices and direct awards

The Procurement Act’s transparency ambition is delivered through a centralised publication model. The Act legislated for a central digital platform, delivered as an enhanced Find a Tender service. Under the Act, statutory procurement notices must be published on that platform.

This is a benefit, but it also turns internal ambiguity into visible compliance risk. When people talk about “notice publication issues”, it usually shows up in one of three ways.

Sequencing and understanding “what comes next”. Find a Tender publishes an overview of notice types and sequences and states that, for procurement processes starting 24 February 2025 or later, the notices specified by the Act must be published (with stated exceptions). With previous internal processes built around the previous “contract notice then award notice” rhythm, this represents a genuine operational shift.

Timing and statutory clocks. Some transparency duties are time bound. For example, Cabinet Office guidance on contract details notices explains that a contract details notice must generally be published within 30 days of the contract being entered into (with a longer period for certain light touch contracts). If your internal governance focuses on “award approval” but contract signature takes time, your clock can slip without anyone intending it.

Ownership after award. There is a clear emphasis on the fact that notices extend into contract management. In many organisations, contract management sits in service teams, not in procurement. Without clear ownership, the risk becomes predictable: tasks become “shared”, and shared becomes “missed”.

It is also worth re-grounding this in the recent experience of transparency systems in the United Kingdom. In its 2024 report on procurement of common goods and services, the National Audit Office observed that the legacy systems had limited functionality and that some buyers had not met legal requirements to provide complete, accurate and timely data. It also reported the Cabinet Office’s view that it had no mechanism for enforcing compliance to provide data. That is not a comment on any specific authority. It is a reminder that transparency compliance has historically been hard to operationalise, and the new regime raises the bar.

PA23 attempts to reduce those problems by structuring data and centralising publication. But it still depends on operational discipline.

One practical pressure point is identifiers. The Procurement Regulations include concepts of unique identifiers for procurements, contracts, suppliers and authorities, and guidance on the central digital platform covers the use of unique identifiers and requirements relating to keeping procurement records. In plain terms, data joining up depends on consistent identifiers. If your internal contract numbering and your platform identifiers are not aligned, reporting becomes more manual and more fragile. Authorities will recognise the internal challenges this creates, particularly where different departments, (sometimes even the same department), record contracts using inconsistent identifiers across the lifecycle.

Direct awards deserve a specific mention because they are high visibility decisions. The official direct award guidance states that, under the Act, a transparency notice must be published before a contract is directly awarded. The governance message is simple: even where the direct award ground is sound, failing to publish the transparency notice undermines the public record of the decision. Again, as procurement professionals will well know, the practicality of this is that contracts are often well in to commencement before any notices have been issued.

One other “year one” stressor is that transparency also pushes behaviour earlier. The official transparency module includes pipeline notice requirements for certain organisations (summarised as mandatory for organisations with spend of £100 million plus per annum). That is not just an extra notice. It is a demand for better forward planning discipline. For those organisations in scope, pipeline notice requirements demand earlier and more structured forward planning. Predicting future spend patterns at that stage can create tension between procurement and service leads.

Contract registers and payments: where procurement meets finance

A year into PA23, one of the biggest practical shifts is this: procurement data, finance data and contract management data are no longer separable. The Act’s transparency model ties them together.

From a governance perspective, the internal contract register is a dependency, not a “nice to have”. If your register is incomplete or inconsistent, you have three predictable downstream problems:

• You cannot reliably publish the notices that depend on being able to identify the contract.

• You cannot reliably link later reporting (performance, payment information) to the correct contract.

• You cannot easily demonstrate control over off contract spend or contract leakage, because “what is the contract?” is not a stable reference point.

Payment transparency is also a contract level issue. The government’s prompt payment policy guidance states that the Act mandates a 30-day payment term in public procurement contracts (implied even if not written into the contract), and that it extends to relevant subcontracts. It also highlights that invoices must be paid within 30 days of receipt, not validation.

The Act then turns payment practices into publishable information. A payments compliance notice reports, over a six-month period, the extent to which invoices were paid in accordance with the prompt payment term.

And, importantly for your “supplier versus contract” point, Cabinet Office guidance updated in February 2026 explains that contract payment information links individual payments to the corresponding contract using specified identifiers. This is where finance and procurement systems either join up cleanly, or they do not.

A common challenge is that finance systems have historically tracked supplier-level spend rather than contract-specific spend. Moving to contract-level visibility requires spend to be coded against the contract at requisition and purchase order stage. That represents a genuine process shift and a wider training requirement for operational staff. The implications of not recording payments at contract level may only become apparent once payment information is due for publication.

Contract performance notices shift attention firmly into contract management. Section 71 requires KPI performance to be reported and, in certain circumstances, breach or poor performance information to be published. They are required at least annually and again on termination.

The governance implication is straightforward: if you cannot evidence what is happening in delivery, you cannot credibly publish performance information. That does not mean you need a perfect contract management system tomorrow. It means you need a minimum viable way of defining KPIs, assessing them, and retaining the evidence behind the assessment.

Resourcing pressure is a legitimate conversation. The government’s original impact assessment modelled additional administrative burdens for notice requirements across the contract lifecycle. At an authority level, some governance papers explicitly recognise a significant increase in administrative burden due to additional transparency notices and describe that burden as needing to be absorbed within procurement team resource.

The reality is that in many organisations, procurement functions have historically been under-invested. The additional transparency and governance demand of PA23 are now exposing that gap. By contrast, authorities that have invested in capable, well-structured procurement teams have seen demonstrable efficiency gains and measurable financial benefit.

Records, audit trails and decision defensibility

PA23 is not just about publishing information. It is also about being able to explain the decisions that sit behind what you publish.

Section 98 requires contracting authorities to keep records sufficient to explain a “material decision” made for the purpose of awarding or entering into a public contract. A decision is “material” if it is required by the Act or where the authority is required to publish a notice or other information as a result of the decision, and it refers to a three-year retention period.

Where key decisions sit in personal inboxes rather than structured records, governance risk increases. Email trails are fragmented, difficult to retrieve and rarely structured in a way that supports audit or challenge. The risk becomes particularly visible when individuals leave the organisation and decision history leaves with them.

In practice, defensibility comes from whether you can answer three questions quickly, with evidence:

• What was decided?

• Why was it decided?

• How was it decided (process, approvals, evidence base)?

The regime links record keeping and transparency in a way that raises the stakes. If you publish more notices, you create more material decisions. More material decisions mean more records that need to be captured and retained in a structured way.

A helpful way for senior leaders to think about this is: if the decision story only exists across personal inboxes, then the decision story does not really exist.

If you want a practical, non-legal test, try this: ask someone outside the project team to read the procurement file and explain, in two minutes, why the winning tender won. If they cannot do it, your evidence trail is likely too messy.

NPPS, SMEs and aggregation: making “have regard” tangible

The transparency and tracking issues get most of the attention, but senior procurement professionals know that risk often starts earlier: in how the procurement is shaped.

The NPPS duty is to consider, and to evidence that you did. The National Procurement Policy Statement sets out strategic priorities and comes into effect alongside the new regime. The Act creates a statutory duty to have regard to the policy objectives in the NPPS that is current at the time you carry out a procurement.

Cabinet Office NPPS guidance gives a practical steer: contracting authorities should document their thinking on which NPPS policies a procurement can contribute to and how, and note why any policies were considered irrelevant or disproportionate. That is a sensible governance approach because it is easy to evidence and easy to audit.

SMEs are not just a “policy theme”; the Act hard codes the “barriers” question. When carrying out covered procurements, contracting authorities must have regard to the fact that SMEs may face particular barriers to participation and consider whether such barriers can be removed or reduced. The official lots guidance explicitly links dividing a procurement into lots as one potential way of reducing barriers.

Conditions of participation also need to withstand scrutiny. Cabinet Office guidance explains that conditions of participation must be a proportionate means of ensuring suppliers have the capacity or ability to perform the contract, having regard to the nature, cost and complexity of the contract. That makes “copy and paste” financial thresholds and generic technical requirements a risk where they are not clearly justified.

Aggregation and multiple low value contracts are best handled through the lens of valuation and anti-avoidance. Guidance on valuation explains why these rules exist: different thresholds trigger different obligations, so authorities need a methodology to estimate value. The valuation guidance also summarises that section 4 and Schedule 3 restrict manipulation of estimated contract value to avoid the requirements in the legislation. The Act includes an anti-avoidance mechanism aimed at preventing contracting authorities from artificially subdividing contracts to arrive at a below-threshold valuation. Contracts that can reasonably be supplied under a single contract should be aggregated for valuation unless there are good reasons not to do so.

That gives you a safe, defensible narrative:

• Fragmentation can be commercially inefficient (lost leverage, inconsistent terms, harder supplier oversight).

• It can create legal and transparency risk if it appears driven by threshold avoidance rather than genuine need.

• The answer is not “always consolidate”. The answer is “make an intentional decision and document the rationale”.

A practical way to evidence that is to add a short valuation and aggregation note to your strategy file: what requirements you considered within scope, what you aggregated, what you kept separate, and why.

A practical toolkit for the next six months

If you want your approach to stand up to scrutiny, focus on defensibility rather than perfection. Defensibility is about ownership, evidence and retrieval.

Defensibility checklist:

• Do we have a single mapping of which notices we publish, who publishes them, and what triggers them, including contract management notices?

• Are internal milestones aligned to legal triggers such as “contract entered into”?

• Can we publish contract details notices within required timescales, including contract copy and KPI publication where required?

• Do we have a standard direct award workflow that includes the transparency notice requirement?

• Can we produce a clear record for material decisions (procedure choice, exclusions, evaluation, award), not just email fragments?

• Is the NPPS consideration documented for each covered procurement, including why any priorities were not relevant or proportionate?

• Can we evidence that we considered SME barriers and whether they could be reduced, including lotting decisions?

• Is our contract register complete enough to support later reporting on performance and payments?

• Can finance report spend at contract level using the identifiers that link payments to the contract?

• Do contract managers know which contracts require KPIs and performance reporting, and is that built into mobilisation?

• Do we have an agreed approach to transitional procurements so teams do not mix old and new rule sets?

• Are we aware that the Procurement Review Unit can investigate contracting authorities to ensure compliance with the Act?

Minimum viable evidence pack:

If senior leadership asked tomorrow, “show me we are under control”, a minimum viable evidence pack might include:

• Procurement governance summary (delegations, approvals, roles).

• Notice workflow map from planning to contract management.

• Contract register extract showing unique identifiers and publication status (contract details notices, contract copy and KPI requirements where relevant).

• Record keeping approach for material decisions (minimum file structure and retention approach).

• NPPS considerations template and an example procurement file.

• SME barrier and lots consideration note for that same file.

• Payments and performance reporting plan: who owns payments compliance notices, contract payment information and contract performance notices, and where data comes from.

If you only fix three things:

First, make notice publishing owned and mapped end to end. Reduce the “shared responsibility” gap by assigning clear owners and clear triggers across the lifecycle.

Second, make the contract register the single source of truth, including contract identifiers, KPI requirement flags, and reporting dates. Then drive payments and performance reporting from that same dataset.

Third, standardise the evidence trail for material decisions. Make it easy for teams to do the right thing by giving them a minimum record structure that captures decisions outside inboxes.

To continue improvement…..

For Section 151 and finance leaders:

• Agree a contract level spend model and identifier approach with procurement.

• Confirm who owns payment reporting and how invoice data will be extracted and published.

• Ask internal audit to test the seam between contract register completeness and spend assurance, not only tender process compliance.

For Heads of Procurement and commercial leads:

• Embed NPPS and SME barrier considerations into templates and approval workflows so they become standard evidence.

• Build a direct award pack that includes the justification narrative, approvals and the transparency notice step.

• Refresh your “material decision” record structure so evaluation and moderation are defensible and retrievable.

For service owners and contract managers:

• Add KPI, performance reporting and publication responsibilities into mobilisation checklists for relevant contracts.

• Strengthen change control so contract changes are not handled ad hoc, and ensure the workflow produces an evidence trail.

• Agree what “good evidence” looks like for performance issues, so publication duties do not appear as a surprise.

• Track spend fluctuations!

The Act is live. The question is whether your evidence is.