The Procurement Act 2023 and Central Digital Platform

The Procurement Act 2023 came into effect on 24 February 2025.  The aim of the Act is to simplify and improve the procurement process and provide more opportunities for suppliers by:

• simplifying the bidding processes, making it easier for suppliers to bid for contracts
• enhancing negotiation and partnership opportunities through a new ‘competitive flexible’ procedure
• making public procurement more flexible and more transparent
• introducing new opportunities that benefit suppliers of all sizes that supply goods, works or services to the University.

The act also introduced a Central Digital Platform which is an enhancement to the existing Find a Tender Service.

Central Digital Platform Registration

The platform is the place for suppliers to find out what opportunities are available that they might wish to bid for.

The Central Digital Platform has been designed to:

• simplify the process of finding and bidding for contracts
• feature a simple straight forward registration approach for both suppliers and buyers
• store suppliers’ core business details that can be used for multiple bids
• enable easy management and updating of core information quickly
• make public procurement opportunities visible making it easier to search at no cost and set up alerts for tenders of interest for suppliers

Access the Central Digital Platform

For further information and guidance on how to register onto the Central Digital Platform via the Find a Tender Service, and to read the Procurement Act 2023, visit the gov.uk page.