Regulated procurement | UK Regulatory Outlook October 2025

How to set up consortia on a new video guide for suppliers: Central Digital Platform - Find a Tender  

To help suppliers and other stakeholders navigate the complexities of new provisions under the Procurement Act, the Government Commercial Function (GCF) has published a series of videos to help everyone understand and navigate the Central Digital Platform - Find a Tender service, including how to register, upload organisational information and search and bid for opportunities. 

The GCF's latest video provides a short overview for suppliers of what they need to do to register as a consortium of two or more suppliers and bid for contracts on the Find a Tender service. 

The video can be accessed here and the GCF's supplier information page is available here. 

CMA recommends that public procurement be used to proactively shape markets in response to consultation on further reform 

On 22 September, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its response to the Cabinet Office's June 2025 consultation on further reforms to public procurement to ensure that public procurement improves domestic competitiveness, strengthens the UK's economic resilience and supports British businesses. 

The CMA considers that public procurement can and should be used as a very powerful lever for achieving economic objectives. Its position is that public procurement can be used to proactively shape markets by encouraging start-ups and scale-ups; driving market dynamism, building capacity and resilience, delivering long-term value for money, and improving quality and innovation. 

While it recognises that there are challenges associated with shaping markets this way (including a lack of capacity and resourcing, misaligned incentives and ineffective coordination), its response sets out practical ways to minimise the potential for these issues to take hold. A thorough understanding of the market in question, especially, along with clear policy objectives and a vision of what a well-functioning market would look like for the government are essential. 

In its response to the consultation questions, specifically, the CMA proposes: 

• More explicitly embedding market shaping into public procurement processes and decision-making, for example by incorporating this into the proposed minimum weighting of social value criteria.
• Adding a question to the proposed public interest test for outsourcing asking whether in-house provision could help promote competition in the market 

Generally, the CMA wants the government to find ways to ensure that its role in shaping the markets from which it procures is incorporated into its reform proposals, so that they can be ultimately carried forward into procurement processes and outcomes. 

Cabinet Office publishes Anti-slavery Risk Tiering Tool and guidance document 

Please see Modern Slavery section.