01The Biggest Change to Public Procurement in a Decade
The Procurement Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023. It came into force on 24 February 2025, replacing the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. For care providers bidding for local authority contracts, this is the most significant legislative change to the tendering landscape since the Social Value Act 2012.
Most care providers have not updated their tender approach to reflect it.
This article covers the changes that directly affect how care sector tenders are evaluated, scored, and awarded. It is written for providers who bid for domiciliary care, supported living, community support, and specialist care contracts through local authority procurement processes.
02From MEAT to MAT: Not Just a Name Change
Under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, contracts were awarded to the Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT). In practice, this meant price was the dominant factor. Quality carried a percentage weighting, but councils could and did award contracts primarily on cost.
The Procurement Act 2023 replaces MEAT with the Most Advantageous Tender (MAT). The word “economically” has been removed. The legal basis for evaluation now requires contracting authorities to consider value in the broadest sense: outcomes, quality, sustainability, and community impact, not just unit cost.
For care providers, the implications are substantial.
03Quality Weighting Has Increased
Across care sector procurements published since February 2025, quality weightings have moved upwards. Tenders that previously ran 50/50 price-quality are now appearing at 60/40 or 70/30 in favour of quality. Some specialist services are scored at 80/20 or 100/0 (quality only).
This means a provider who invests in quality writing and evidence will gain more competitive advantage from that investment than at any point in the past decade.
04Price Can No Longer Compensate for Weak Quality
Under MEAT, a provider with a poor quality score could sometimes win on price. Under MAT, this is structurally harder. If quality carries 70% of the total and your quality score is mediocre, reducing your price by 5% gains you less than improving one quality question from 3/5 to 5/5.
05The New Transparency Requirements
The Procurement Act 2023 introduces transparency obligations that change how tenders are published, evaluated, and reported.
06Pipeline Notices
Contracting authorities with an expected spend above £100 million annually must publish pipeline notices at least once a year, outlining planned procurements for the next 18 months. For care providers, this creates advance visibility of upcoming opportunities, allowing earlier preparation.
07Tender Notices on a Single Platform
All above-threshold procurement notices must now be published on the central Find a Tender platform. The fragmentation of opportunities across different portals and frameworks is being consolidated. Care providers who previously missed tenders because they were published on obscure local portals now have a single source to monitor.
08Assessment Summaries
After contract award, contracting authorities must publish an assessment summary explaining how the winning tender was evaluated and why it scored highest. For unsuccessful bidders, this is a significant change. Previously, feedback was inconsistent and often vague. The assessment summary provides structured data on how each criterion was scored.
TenderLab uses published assessment summaries to reverse-engineer scoring patterns for specific councils. This data feeds directly into our bid engineering process.
09Social Value Is Now a Statutory Scoring Criterion
Under the old regulations, social value was encouraged but not mandatory for all contracts. The Procurement Act 2023, combined with PPN 06/20 and the updated Social Value Model, makes social value a scored criterion in the evaluation of every public contract above threshold.
For care sector tenders, social value weightings have risen from the traditional 5% to anywhere between 10% and 30% of the total score. This is not a projection. It is observable in published tenders from 2025 onwards.
The scoring requirements are specific:
Measurable targets. Evaluators must be able to assess whether commitments can be verified. “We will support local communities” scores poorly. “We will recruit 80% of staff from within the borough and spend £45,000 annually with local suppliers” scores well.
Area specificity. Generic social value answers score lower than those referencing the contract area by name, citing local organisations, and aligning with the council’s published priorities.
Reporting methodology. Stating how social value delivery will be measured and reported to the commissioning team is a differentiator. Most providers omit this entirely.
10Changes to Exclusion and Selection
The Act introduces mandatory and discretionary exclusion grounds that replace the previous regime.
11Mandatory Exclusion Grounds
Suppliers must be excluded if they have been convicted of specific offences including fraud, bribery, money laundering, and modern slavery. The Act also introduces a central debarment list maintained by the Cabinet Office. Suppliers on this list are automatically excluded from all public contracts.
12Discretionary Exclusion Grounds
Contracting authorities may exclude suppliers for poor past performance, breach of contract, professional misconduct, or significant deficiencies in a prior public contract. For care providers, this means CQC enforcement action, contract terminations, or serious safeguarding failures could be raised as grounds for exclusion.
13Self-Cleaning
The Act provides a mechanism for suppliers to demonstrate they have addressed past issues. This involves providing evidence of remedial action, such as changes to management, training programmes, compliance systems, and independent audits. A provider with a historical issue is not permanently excluded if they can demonstrate credible self-cleaning.
14Dynamic Markets Replace DPS
The Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) under the old regulations is replaced by Dynamic Markets under the Procurement Act 2023. The mechanics are similar but with important differences for care providers.
Open entry throughout the contract period. New providers can join a dynamic market at any time, not just at set intervals.
Simplified qualification. The Act reduces the administrative burden for joining a dynamic market compared to the old DPS process.
Sub-market segmentation. Contracting authorities can create sub-markets within a dynamic market, for example by service type (domiciliary care, supported living, complex needs) or geography. Providers join only the segments relevant to their capability.
For care providers, dynamic markets represent the primary route to local authority contracts in many areas. Understanding the qualification requirements and maintaining up-to-date documentation is essential.
15The Competitive Assessment: A New Evaluation Methodology
The Act introduces competitive assessments as a formal evaluation methodology. This allows contracting authorities to weight criteria differently at different stages of the procurement and to use comparative assessment rather than absolute scoring.
In practical terms, this means some care tenders may use a two-stage process:
Stage 1: Selection based on capability, experience, and compliance. Scored on a pass/fail or simple ranking basis.
Stage 2: Quality and price assessment for shortlisted providers. Scored using the detailed rubrics described in our scoring systems blog.
Providers who previously entered a single-stage competition and competed against 20+ bidders may now face a shortlisting stage followed by a smaller competitive field. This changes the effort allocation: Stage 1 responses must be strong enough to progress, but the real differentiation happens at Stage 2.
16What This Means for How You Write Tenders
The Procurement Act 2023 shifts the competitive landscape in favour of providers who invest in quality writing and evidence. The practical changes for bid strategy are:
Allocate more resource to quality responses. Quality carries more weight under MAT than it did under MEAT. Every additional mark gained on quality is worth more in the final ranking.
Build social value into every bid. Treat social value as a scored section requiring the same rigour as safeguarding or service delivery questions. Area-specific, measurable, evidenced.
Use published assessment summaries for intelligence. After every contract award, the summary tells you how the winning bid scored. Use this data to calibrate your future responses.
Maintain exclusion-ready documentation. Self-declarations, DBS policies, modern slavery statements, and compliance certifications must be current and accessible. A failed mandatory check eliminates you before your quality responses are read.
Prepare for dynamic market entry. If your target council operates a dynamic market, ensure your documentation is ready for immediate submission. New providers can join at any time. Delay is a choice, not a constraint.
The Act does not make tendering easier. It makes tendering more transparent, more quality-driven, and more demanding of evidence. Providers who adapt to this will win more contracts. Providers who continue bidding as they did under the old regulations will find the gap between their scores and the winners’ scores widening.
17How TenderLab Has Adapted
TenderLab updated its entire bid engineering methodology when the Procurement Act 2023 came into force. Our process now incorporates MAT-aligned quality weighting analysis, social value scoring frameworks built around the Social Value Model, and systematic use of published assessment summaries to build council-specific intelligence.
Every tender we produce is engineered for the post-2025 regulatory environment. If your current bid writer is still producing submissions structured for the old MEAT framework, the Act has already moved the goalposts.