Ensuring eSignature Lawfulness for Procurement in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: e-signature lawfulness for Procurement in United Kingdom

so welcome and thanks for joining us today as i said my name is jane thorne and i'm from supc supc is part of the sums group and we're hosting this webinar today on behalf of the uk upc uh and today we're joined by david hanson and sarah duke who are framework supplier partners from clyde co and today we're going to be talking about transforming public procurement and preparing for changes to the pcr so david's got a presentation as i say we've got q a so please use the q a function upgrade questions you want to hear from and i'll hand over to david now and he'll take it away on transforming public procurement thanks david thanks very much jane good morning everybody wherever you are around the country unconscious it is um indian summer time it is uh super warm and you're giving up uh an hour of your day to listen to this i will as ever do my best to make the session as interesting and as relevant as i possibly can the subject matter may not lend itself to witty anecdotes or um trying to crack jokes so i will steer clear of that but um what i won't do is overrun on time so we have 55 minutes for those of you timing me um today left and i want to make sure we've got some time for uh questions and answers at the end we will as um uh as jane says be producing um blogs posts to capture any questions that we can't answer today and also clydes is producing a series of comment commentaries on the programmer bill as it goes through its legislative journey so if you would like to um sign up for those then uh please do so uh via our website um i uh as jane said um uh i'm david hansen i'm head of the procurement law team at clyde and co uh my team amongst other things specializes in helping uh universities and um uh other education institutions um to deal with all aspects of procurement from stock market testing early engagement through to running running procedures and then seems to be a theme at the moment but changing contracts varying contracts and looking at the material change provisions in the regulations and that also dealing with unhappy suppliers um and dealing with uh when they arise procurement disputes i think there's something in the air at the moment i think there's a bit of a trend uh in the sector um without naming names there's probably four or five suppliers who keep coming up again and again and they might start with the letters m or t or s but um it's it's a busy market and we're seeing at the moment real scrutiny on particularly the larger long-term contracts that a number of our university clients are entering into so what are we going to cover today well it won't have escaped your attention that the procurement bill 2022 uh has now uh been published and is making its way through the house of lords and house of commons on it on its legislative journey um this session is called transforming public procurement it's stolen from the name of the green paper um and that's certainly the government's ambition as we'll see in terms of the scale of reforms that's proposed so i'm going to talk today about slides work there we are i'm going to talk today about um a number of different themes but first of all in the spirit of interactivity um we have a first poll question one of two questions today um could you please vote on this question do you think the public procurement rules in the uk need to be reformed and there's a yes or no answer so no no hiding please do vote now okay so looks like that's closed now so overwhelmingly not inconsistent with uh the responses i've i've been getting we've been getting from a number of these sessions that we've been running um whether for individual institutions or for consorting 91 of those uh attending think that the procurement rules do need uh reform and only nine percent so 12 of you think not well happily you're wishing which has been granted and what we are looking at now is the um i think the biggest reforms since 2006 in terms of public procurement regulation in the uk let's take half a step back and just set the scene i think it's always helpful just to remind ourselves of where we were and how we got here um but obviously we're gonna spend most of today looking at what might be coming down the track so um i guess sort of pre-2000 public procurement was was a feature of any public contracts in the sense that there are rules around compulsory competitive tendering historically in local authorities in the uk um and there were procurement regulations that that was set out in broad terms how how contracts should be awarded um as the role of the eu grew in terms of the single market public programming became is the competence of the european union and with the aim of promoting the single market they're encouraging uh in principle at least the french not just to buy french the germans not just by german and the british not just by british the public procurement regime that we all know and love or or perhaps not based on the the votes of that poll um came to pass and in in um 2006 we had i guess the first consolidated set of regulations uh which came directly from eu law and those were transposed into the uk rule book and then in 2015 we had um directives 2014 24 ec which is the directive which gives us the current regulations that we have now it wasn't on the side of a bus uh in 2016 um but public procurement reform has become it seems a bit of a cause celebra for the current uk administration um along with a number of other things that derive from eu uh eu regulations such as state aid or subsidy control which is also being reformed and the uk and the government is really in every interview you hear uh mps or or ministers talking about this the sort of perceived benefits of brexit um one of them is performing the procurement so the government now through uh the publication of the green paper transforming public procurement um has said that it believes that procurement can be made faster fairer and more effective and by doing that um the uh the aim is to tailor uh our public procurement regime to the um needs of the british economy rather than um what is seen by some ministers at least as being a compromised set of regulations that were agreed by 28 member states and whilst the uk it's fair to say had a had a very strong hand in in agreeing those those regulations the government is is keen to capitalize or seek to capitalize on on this reform as part of that part of that brexit agenda so um on that basis the current intention is that the uk will will will diverge away from eu procurement regulation and uh judgments of the european court of justice will be uh instructive will be can be noted by the european by the uk english courts by the uk court um but no longer directly effective now that the uk has completed its transition period out of the eu so what am i going to talk about for the rest of today's session well i'm going to talk about how the rules will apply to your institution and apply to the work that you're doing and we'll look at that in some detail one of the biggest areas of feedback on the consultation in terms of responses from the public sector or from bodies governed by public law was what was perceived to be is perceived to be a huge step change in upfront transparency from the buyer in relation to what you're going to buy when you're going to buy it um how are you going to buy it and for the first time how the contract's going to be run and how the supplier performed in delivering that contract the transparency obligations are one of the aspects that leap out really from the um draft bill it's fair to say and you will have all got this impression already and those of you that have heard me speak on this topic before will know that i could talk very happily i'm not sure whether you'd be as happy but i could talk very happily about the procurement bill and all its many facets for um at least half a day so what i've tried to do here is to be judicious in terms of what we look at and the areas that we pick up but of course the q a can can pick up any questions then we'll look at the new proposed rules on framework agreements um which i think is another key aspect for institutions to those of you who are members of the uk upc um i'll also then want to pick up on three cases just to try and bring some of the current landscape to life before we move into q and a i pride myself on not losing anybody during a webinar um and i don't intend to start that uh today um but let's hope that by the time we get to the end of the q a um you there's something in here for for everybody so i've touched on a lot of this already i never talked to all of my slides but this is really so that colleagues and and and when you come back and watch the exciting recording that we're making um you you've got the full context in case you are stopped in the lift by uh a vice chancellor or by a member of the the council or the senior management team so i guess the journey here um we've seen the green paper it's been published many of you may have responded uh to that and we didn't put it into responses for four clients um alongside really the shake-up in procurement the broader context here um we have the national procurement policy statement the npps they've been in pps's for a number of years i think and my sense and my spies uh in government tell me but the mpps is taking on a new significance then we can expect that to be more detailed and for uh contracting authorities to be really expected to act in a way which is consistent with that through the statement itself and through a number of procurement policy notes or ppm um so the bill procurement bill which consolidates and you'll have heard this mentioned by uh different cabinet ministers on tv consolidates a number of different sets of regulations like public utilities concessions defense and remedies the current five sets of regulations into one act now whether or not that's going to end in in short for legislation is there is a matter of some uh debate the bill is already sizable and for those of you that have read it and as an aside if any of you ever can't sleep or want to get away from in-laws or small children or or pets over a long weekend i can recommend a read of even the draft um by the time the bill is completed and all the schedules have been uh fully populated and the secondary legislation so the regulations that are promised under the procurement act um are passed and the statutory guidance that is promised um to bolster or to give effect to a number of the provisions in the act the jury's out certainly for me as to whether or not we're gonna end up in a in a shorter shorter document by the time we've got to the end um as i'll say at the end of this session when we're talking about what practical things are or practical things are to think about now the government has promised at least six months warning before the royal before the procurement act uh will be uh taking a legal effect so it may get through parliament sooner but what the government has said is that people need time for training people need time to update documents etc and um therefore there will be six months notice given to us so um will the new rules apply to the university especially get asked a lot uh will the what will the new rules apply to the same institutions as they do now well in broad terms uh i think the answer to that is yes the definition of a contracting authority is slightly different in the um in the new uh bill it will apply to central government departments arms linked bodies or clangos for wanting a better word off those departments and the wider public sector that includes the health authorities local government etc as well as utility companies whether where they are awarding regulated contracts so contracts that relate to their regulated activity as well as concessional contracts the definition of construction authority um is slightly different in terms of how it's written particularly relation to the current exemption that applies for um organizations that have a commercial or industrial character but in essence the legal tests for a university will will the current drafting uh stay the same which is the question of the extent to which uh the entities is exercising public functions uh and is under um financial has financial tendency to or management control from the state the reason why uh the majority of publicly funded tertiary education um providers in the uk for within the definition of a body governed by public law is where more than 50 of your income in one financial year comes from the state including domestic students student loans for tuition etc um that's an analysis that you do year on year we've helped a number of institutions from large to small from research intensive to local post-92 institutions to look at that and and i've personally taken a number of institutions out of the regulations and all the changes that flow from that uh over the last few years um there's nothing in the green paper to carve out uh universities um in the same way perhaps as um the procurement of nhs clinical services carved out of the of the bill because that's going to be dealt with under the nhs long-term plan um so in essence the current direction of travel is that if you're within scope of the regulations now and all the signs are you'll continue to be in this new world i do have a number of uh clients talking to us about whether we can bring forward that review to see whether or not um we uh whether the uh law continues to apply to the institution i'm not sure that's linked directly to the law completely fundamentally changing in a year's time um but there may be a connection a connection there um so um the green paper doesn't contain anything specific for the for the education sector for any of you uh who are members of uk upc uh whether you are a university uh or not so the the legal tests also still need to be applied on a financial year basis looking forward based on projections in terms of income um and um the other myth i'd like to dispel is that i hear a lot that that we talk about opting out of the opting out of the rules it's it's it's not a choice in the sense that um the organization either meets the legal test for a contracting authority or it doesn't and that is evidenced uh in the context in the case of this sector by the by the numbers by by the income split between institutions and you'll all recognize that particularly those of you in the finance roles or close to the finances of your organization you'll all you'll all know that that can change uh year on year i think i've just dropped forward there we are so i talked about it transparency is a key focus of the new regime it's fair today as i've said that it's one which has probably caused the most uh the deepest sharpest intake of breath across the public sector buying community transparency has been encouraged um through the consultation going back to 2020 but a number of the comments and feedback the government received from particularly from central government but across the piece was that really um the transparency requirements as they were drafted in the green paper would have required the recruitment of several new staff etc simply to deal with the volume of of administrative paperwork in terms of producing documents for buddhism for the market so what we see now in the procurement bill and it's worth reminding ourselves of course that at this stage we're just talking about draft legislation it could and will in all likely have changed before we get to implementation but it's right to say that the final proposals around transparency are diluted somewhat from the original green paper and i think what's key there is that we'll see from as you see from the slide the government is is it pains to now say that transparency should be proportionate to the value of the contract um and to the nature of the contract being carried out but there are some baselines i'm going to talk to now there wasn't there was a proposal but again um if i could hear any of you i'm sure you i might hear some some signs of release here um there was a proposal initially that all contracts that were entered into by a contracting authority following a procurement would need to be published and that has perhaps mercifully been dropped however there is an obligation in the current draft that any contracts worth over 2 million pounds will need to be redacted for confidential personal or sensitive information which in itself is a skill and we can talk about that that when we get to question um where the value is more than more than two million pounds per say but that will capture a surprising amount of um longer-term or strategic contracts that that your organizations will enter into you don't need to spend much on an i.t system you don't need to spend you don't need to be doing much um building work of a new science level or or um student accommodation to get over that number um and actually it's on those bigger longer term contracts where um redaction is going to be really really important um to manage as an example of the extreme administrative burden there was an obligation there was going to be an obligation to publish every submitted tender in relation to an above threshold regulated procurement that again has been dropped um you can you can foresee uh stormy waters ahead if um contracting authorities i think were disclosing uh each bidder's bid to each other and the impact that would have on on um not least the protection of good ideas and um innovative proposals that contractors may have had i think one of the one of the really big changes and one that i think is going to have a profound impact is the changes that are proposed to the debriefing and standstill regime so currently under the 2015 regs when you get to the end of your procurement breathe a big sigh of relief your evaluators have done the scoring you've got all the evaluation notes in you your evaluators of course have evaluated the bids against the published evaluation criteria and lost against each at each bid and you've come up with a a winner and you come up with the reasons why the winner won along with the marks for each of the other bidders you then currently have to engage and i don't know why this always seems to uh fall to us to do on a on a friday afternoon uh it seems to me um that this is the most difficult bit of a curve of a procurement at the moment you don't have to do what is an entirely artificial exercise of comparison between the bids to come up with a standard still letter which hasn't been done before in in in the uh procurement because the evaluation's been against the criteria it is difficult to convey to uh innovatively disappointed people that have been unsuccessful it is difficult particularly if the evaluation notes are shall we say not as complete as you may have liked or um don't uh perhaps give reasons that that that hold that much water and you're faced with a fairly impossible task i think of translating the award or information you've been given uh and telling it into a letter that can go to bitter who is looking for any crack in the armor uh um to try and persuade you often to change your mind so that is going under the what's proposed to go under the new procurement bill the proposal now uh is there that um and i see i see a comment that someone's been there in terms of the the joys of stand still letters and i'm sure that um you won't be the only the only one um the proposal now is essentially in a nutshell is to let the bidders do that comparison exercise themselves the plan is that all bidders will be given redacted so again there's a job for us to do to redact that information to take out anything which is commercially sensitive personal or sensitive and provide the redacted evaluation documents on the winning bid and then give the specific individual unsuccessful bidder their own documents privately so everyone gets the redacted winners version and then each loser gets their own with their own unredacted evaluation notes using the bidders to do the evaluation exercise themselves now the merit of that is that it says saves us all saves you all the job of having to do it exercise the downsides are um are perhaps obvious to see which is that that process is only as good as the information you provide and i think it is likely that certainly early on that debrief track will be will be will be scrutinized not just by the bid team within the uh supplier but potentially also by lawyers as well and i think that um one of the aims here is to simplify procurement and i think whilst one can see the what the government's trying to achieve um i think the guidance and any regulations that's just around how this is going to work are going to be absolutely fundamental um around kobe 19 ppe procurements etcetera there's been a lot of scrutiny and the judicial review litigation brought by the good law project and others in relation to direct awards of contracts and it's fair to say if you look at find the tender it's not just a uk phenomenon because actually if you look at the official journal it's the same across europe but there's been a huge amount of public contracts directly awarded in the last 12 18 months two years um those have all largely been on the basis of regulation 32 direct award by a negotiated procedure without prior publication of an ag notice or a fine attendant notice sometimes it's a regulation 72 material change to extend the scope of a contract to cover coverage period but there's been probably an overuse of that um of those exemptions uh which are designed to be used in in extreme circumstances only i still see um and i'm sure you're still asked to to look at direct awards even now sort of whilst covert hasn't gone away perhaps the immediate urgency has i'm still asked to look at look at justification now using kovid as the reason and i think that it is a matter of time before one or more of those is scrutinized by a supplier so there will be a notice of monetary transparency notice for contracts which were awarded under extreme urgency or the comparable provisions of of what is now regulation 32. other really important points to note i think here are the and i've touched on this already um there's a whole slew of new notices on the next slide or two but um there is a plan to have a publicly available register of supplier performance so procurement law will no longer stop at the end of the 30-day limitation period for procurement challenge and everyone breathe aside relief and move into the contract stage there are going to be obligations on authorities to proactively manage the contract and to disclose to this central registry body um the performance of the supplier against the key performance indicators in the contract um to this central body and where a bidder has performed poorly where the contract's been terminated early because of kpi failures or other failures um andor has um breached one of the grounds of uh mandatory or discretionary exclusion in the new procurement act um there is a plan for a debarment list for the first time so this is sort of a theme which has been taken from other jurisdictions not currently a feature of the eu law but essentially a centralized debarment list which will contain the list of all bidders the group companies etcetera but cannot must not participate in a public procurement process across england wales or northern ireland for a fixed period now you can guess where i'm going with this i think the principle is is a strong one it is only as good as the data held in the central repository i'm always quite skeptical of centralized sort of government repositories of data because i think they can get out of date quickly and the importance of making sure that that's updated is going to be key because suppliers who are on that list are going to be locked out of the entire market for that period of time and you can expect i think bidders to really scrutinize um and appeal um the use of the development list there is a provision currently that allows us to exclude a bidder from a new procurement for prior poor performance on the old one but it's hardly ever used because i think it's a combination of contracting authorities being terrified about getting it wrong and being challenged and also the robustness of the evidence base for making that decision so this should help to address the latter point which is that there should be a robust more robust evidence trail whether or not authorities feel confident to use it uh is another matter uh the light touch regime so that's the regime that applies to social and other services those currently listed in schedule three of the public contracts regulations uh is going to survive will be in an amended form uh and details of that uh will come through so those of you buying uh anything under the light touch regime uh there will that will still exist but there's a range of um uh there's a range of new notices coming through i need to accelerate because i i i'm conscious of of time um range of new notices i'm not going to talk to all these but you can see here that essentially you're being asked in summary to set out in advance uh high value procurements for the year ahead to formalize stock market testing um obviously the advert goes out and the award notice but the new ones are here so contract detail notice that's going to provide details of the contract to walk the awarded contract the implementation notice that's about bringing the kpis into the public domain um and there is going to be much more scrutiny on requirements to publish material changes so regulation 72 in current current money changes so an administrative burden here but i think once you once we've got used to it it will become second nature but it's right to say that that there are changes in that so in terms of your procurement routes um so we've got the five currently the proposal is there'll be uh really just too open and competitive flexible because it's been anecdotally called by procurement lawyers that the clues in the name the idea is that you have flexibility to design a procurement process that works for you so a mixture of comp dialogue mixed with restricted or mixed with negotiated uh to suit you as long as it's fair as long as you publish publish what you're gonna do in advance and it's non-discriminatory i.e you can't invite bidders that have been excluded at an earlier stage back into the final tender stage etcetera but there will be flexibility in principle to do all the things on this slide i think the challenge there will be the confidence that you all need we all need to have that we're designing something which is fair and that works i think there's a risk that we just all default into a restricted type procedure because we kind of know it and i think the government is live for that and he's talking about running training through the government um through the civil service um college uh for uh conducting authorities around actually using some of those some of those uh some of those tools um who's heard the mystery shopper um now called the public procurement review service pprs um i prefer the name mystery shopper that's just just me um essentially what the pi what the ppis does is it's a free of charge not time limited means for someone anybody a student or an employee or a taxpayer or a supplier to chat to complain about procurement the ppos doesn't really have any powers of enforcement it's obviously not great in terms of publicity but there's a slap on the wrist the new procurement review unit or pru is going to be made up of experts appointed by the cabinet office in public procurement um and whilst its remit will be similar um it will have a focus on looking at systemic or institutional repeat issues in procurement and it will be able to investigate uh poor practice where suppliers report those and that can make informal regulation what's the what's recommendations what's the direction of travel here i think the end game is to look at whether or not um procurement disagreements about procurements can be resolved other than through high court proceedings in some jurisdictions in the world there is a procurement tribunal akin to an employment tribunal with lower entry points lower fees and in theory faster justice um could it be that in five years time the piu is able to sort of dole out fines or penalties who knows there is certainly that that henry viii power in the draft legislation in terms of remedies um uh i could talk for hours about the changes to the remedy's rules um but essentially we are staying with high court based litigation the um automatic suspension is staying um the standstill period is being reduced it's proposed to eight working days from the current 10 calendar plus extension if it stands on a non-working day there was a proposal in the green paper to abolish to cap the amount of damages that a bidder could claim um to have to a multiple of the contract value that has been um binge technical term in the draft legislation and also the proposal for an independent third party contracting authority to do a review of what may have gone wrong before a claim can be heard has also fallen away um i think for reasons of cost and resource um so we are currently in the same waters as we are we will be in the same waters as we are now the focuses will be on post procurements remedies for automatic suspension will stay will be it with a new legal test to uh decide whether that that suspension should stay in place uh if if one is brought the government said it's committed to looking at the student tribunal or similar lower cost form but that won't be the case for this new legislation um supplier path performance i've touched on this already this register and i said i'm a bit skeptical about you know uh centralized uh so any in any country centralized registry of information but um there will be a register of supplier performance um it will link into a new discussion reground of exclusion for private prior poor performance of the contract um it is gonna likely require you to upload your kpis for the particular contract to the register and the names of the suppliers and to keep that information updated and indeed the guidance to the bill says that we'll be regularly encouraged to consult the register frameworks now no surprise this is particularly of interest to my clients in who are the consortium but also for institutions that are either left in their own framework agreements uh or are um looking to club together with others to put in place regional or panic regional arrangement currently a framework is a an overarching set of terms and conditions that's run through a new procurement process um four year maximum durations generally um terms of conditions prices and specifications are generally set are set and essentially there's no guarantee of any work and you call down the contract that you need at the time you need it either through a direct award or through a mini competition are you reopening the competition with everybody on the framework the plan in the new world is to have two types of framework agreement open and closed so closed is easier so let's deal with that first broadly speaking out now uh we'll get a four year maximum term if you're on and you're on you can't be added later unless the dynamic purchasing system um and there'll be rules on how to how to run mini competition what's new is the open framework um an open framework can be for up to eight years um as long as you've got a minimum of two suppliers and the plan there is that you set up your open framework um and to be open it must be reopened at least once uh if the duration of the contract because the framework is more than three three years or more and there'll be limitations around how long it could be closed for and that's a maximum of five years in the current draft so essentially what you've got is a framework for eight years and you're reopening um you're reopening that framework to allow certainly new bidders to to join now in the consultation i my my team's view was was well what's the difference between an open framework and two closed ones back to back um if you're gonna make the the bidders that are already on the framework re-bid and again i think we'll have to wait and see what comes out there in relation to that but interestingly again it's all relative but if you're a procurement lawyer interestingly the open model will allow criteria to be changed on many competitions and [Music] good news for the consortium but charging suppliers for access to framework although happens widely now will be expressly permitted conscious of time but the big the biggie slide and i guess what the practical takeaway for today is really take away a few things from what i've said i think this slides cut out and keep um there are lots of changes uh coming we haven't got the full picture because the procurement bill is is not yet finalized and and none of the guidance or regulations are yet enforced if you've started a procurement before the new bill takes to before the new act takes effect then the starting position is that that will be banked under the old rules and that framework can run uh that framework for that contract can run its course under the old regulation there may be some transitional arrangements around remedies but we waited to see um with any change come sometimes uncertainty with uncertainty comes boo hiss work for solicitors i think there is a real risk or i think it's likely that um there's the scope for more or less uh litigation or certainly more skirmishes around how procurement's been run certainly in the early days um that's not a reason not to embrace the new regulation the the new the new law and i think that um in terms of updating template documents training that we're running and others are running for our clients uh just like today and the cabinet office um civil service college training will be really important to make sure that people feel empowered to use a number of these new flexibilities i want to talk about some cases quickly and i've just about got time i've got three cases and four minutes so let's see if i can do it um to really bring to life the landscape we're in now none of these is necessarily higher education specific but i think they all serve to illustrate a point which is that um the procurement challenge market continues to be incredibly active 95 96 of cases that are issued never reach court they settle or the authority um agrees to rewind partially or wholly the procurement process or some other settlement is reached but um you are not immune to complaints and skirmishes from clients there's a skill in spotting a complaint letter from a from a proper challenge letter um but these three cases all uh demonstrate uh i think interesting points this the first one biff away services and leicester county council has the added bonus of being a place that we were involved in this was the case for quite a lot of waste collection and there was an argument with a summary adjustment application by buffer to um to essentially have the case size in their favor without a trial um on the basis that the council was in breach of the procurement rules by anonymizing the the names of the other bidders in the process and by analyzing certain information about um the way that that process has been run um essentially what happened was that the um bidder um uh guest who the other bit whose competitor was in this procurement made certain assumptions about based on their market knowledge about how that bid operated and was wrong and beth and then lost the procurement and said that there was a breach of transparency equal treatment and um non-discrimination uh for the authority to act in the way it did the court happily um on the winning side uh didn't find in favor of the claimant on that summary judgment application said there's no legal duty in relation to anonymized information if you want to keep good details on the last for any reason uh you can do and um the speculation of one bidder that wasn't something that could be dealt with by a summary judgment so i'm not sure how many of you do this but for things like um research projects involving experimentation involving um confidential patient records or something which is sensitive i think this is a helpful case interesting one london fire commissioner this is about the provision of respiratory protective equipment quite a small market probably akin to what's in here probably akin to some of the quite small markets that a lot of your buying goes in goes on in um big contract beast in the uk uh one of the biggest in in continental europe um drago lost and bought a claim which stopped the award of the contract london fire brigade now by commissioner applied to lift that suspension now normally i say normally because it's difficult to draw any trends or themes really um because you can toss a coin on a lot of the adjustments that come out on public procurement just often creating new law but um normally the authority be authorities successful in its application to lift on the basis that public interest is better served by the authority being able to award the contract for the student-facing service or for the particular requirement that you might have um and it damages with an adequate remedy and in this case unusually relatively unusually the court said no this is a massive contract it'll have an impact on the reputation of the supplier um and there are serious issues to be considered so we're not going to lift the suspension but we are going to we are going to order an expedited trial which meant that the case would be heard sooner so an automatic suspension application is not guaranteed to allow your contract to be awarded depending on what you're buying and normal contact and the last one is education related this is about base of knowledge so generally speaking unhappy losing bidders have 30 calendar days from the date they knew or ought to have known about a breach of the procurement regulations and to bring their claim if they say wish um once you're outside 30 days there is scope for the court to extend it up to three months where there were good reasons to do so um but the courts are very reluctant in one case i think two cases where where that's been looked at um so broadly you cut off for 30 days if you're an unhappy bidder and normally you can breathe more easily on the buying side once you get out of that period that data knowledge can move depending on what when bidders knew what so um generally speaking a standstill letter will start the start the clock running for a challenge on the regulator on the bit on the bit of being unsuccessful uh in broncon computers the claim was bought outside of 30 days this was a cloud-based iot system for 37 57 schools um authority the academy trust main application to strike out the claim on the basis at the time uh the court said that because the and this is the wording from the judge because the standard letter was sketchy and inadequate um time hadn't started to run so it is not enough to uh just put down a few words or a few reasons on a letter i hope that gets you there and i think take it in the round against everything i've said today around transparency and the new focus of the new procurement act 2023 around the bidders doing the debrief evaluation assessment themselves um i think this is the hot topic for the next couple of years um as we move one minute over time as we move into the last poll question please before we move to q a so on the base of all i've said do you feel that your institution or your organization will be ready for the new rules in 2023 please vote now let's see if the outcome is the same grace as well i've done this elsewhere yeah i agree i think it is too easy to say i think um what the government is looking to do is to give us all the opportunity to think about our procurement think about applicable policy think about our template documents and attend training on different aspects as we go through i think that there are bear traps in the draft legislation there are more changes than perhaps meet bi i think procedural breaches will be um will will take place and will be scrutinized by suppliers um but i think we'll be in a far better position by the end of this year started next uh to answer that question so uh now three minutes over but um in my defense with a poll question jane that's all i have thanks very much thanks david so um on behalf of uk upc and supc um david thanks ever so much for today um i think the q a in the interaction shows it was a really really valid and worthwhile session um thank you to sarah also for being there when we needed us um thanks to grace and marian again for um hosting and doing the it behind the session so again um thanks very much david slides will be available um and all the recording will be um so from us today thanks very much thank you very much bye