Do you know your vertical arrangements from your horizontal arrangements? What about your pipeline notices from your planned procurement notices? Could you tell us the difference between a Competitive Flexible Procedure and a Multi-Stage Procedure?

The Procurement Act 2023 was given royal assent on 26 October 2023 and is expected to come into force by October 2024. In developing the new Act the Cabinet Office adopted some significant linguistic and stylistic differences from the current, well-known and understood procurement law terms. Clearly, some of the new terminology is adopting existing legislative language already common-place on the face of the statue-book, some of it is political and part of the post-Brexit dividend: putting a new British stamp on procurement jargon, and there are some new concepts altogether that need defining and describing.

This easy-to-use reference guide sets out some of the key terms under the Procurement Act 2023, what they were referred to under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, and in plain language what they are. We hope this will be useful to those new to procurement, as well as experienced practitioners.

Please visit www.trowers.com and search for public procurement in order to find more materials relating to the Procurement Act 2023. Including a selection of Procurement On Demand bite-sized short videos focussing on a single element of the Procurement Act 2023, flowcharts to show you which notices should be published and when, insight articles and much more.