The Procurement Act 2023, which came into force in February 2024, was described by ministers as “the biggest change to public procurement in a generation.” It replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and introduced new transparency requirements, a central digital platform, and revised rules around direct awards. Analysis of Contracts Finder — the government’s central procurement transparency portal — suggests the new framework has not materially reduced the use of non-competitive award processes.
The Scale of Direct Award
Contracts Finder records all central government contracts above £10,000 in value. Analysis of records published in 2024/25 identifies approximately £2.4 billion in contracts awarded through processes described as “direct award,” “single tender action,” or equivalent — meaning no competitive process was conducted. This represents approximately 8% of the total central government contract value published on the portal during the period.
The figure excludes contracts below the £10,000 threshold, which are not published centrally, and contracts awarded under framework agreements, where the competition occurred at framework level rather than individual contract level. Including framework call-offs would reduce the apparent non-competitive figure, but would raise separate questions about whether framework competitions adequately capture value for money at the call-off stage.
The Justifications Used
Direct awards require justification. The Procurement Act 2023 permits direct awards in defined circumstances: genuine emergency; existing contractual commitments; single genuine supplier; and research and development contracts. Analysis of the justifications published on Contracts Finder for the £2.4 billion in direct awards shows that “urgency” accounts for 34% of justifications — a proportion that procurement specialists told Exposed News is high for a period that did not involve a national emergency.
“Urgency” in procurement law does not require a genuine emergency — it can be invoked where delay would damage the contracting authority, even where the urgency was foreseeable. The Cabinet Office’s procurement guidance explicitly cautions against “self-created urgency” — situations where poor planning created the need for a direct award — but there is no mechanism for distinguishing self-created urgency from genuine urgency in published data.
Sector Concentration
Direct awards are not distributed evenly across government. The five departments accounting for the largest share of direct-award contract value in 2024/25 were the Ministry of Defence, NHS England, the Home Office, HMRC, and the Cabinet Office itself. All five are departments with significant IT infrastructure contracts, and a proportion of direct awards relate to legacy system maintenance where a single incumbent supplier holds proprietary knowledge.
IT contract lock-in — where switching suppliers would be disproportionately costly or risky — is a documented procurement failure that successive governments have committed to addressing. The Government Digital Service’s approach to open standards and modular procurement was designed to reduce lock-in. The continued high proportion of direct awards in IT-intensive departments suggests that the structural dependency on incumbent suppliers persists.
What the Procurement Act Changed — and Didn’t
The Procurement Act 2023 introduced a new “transparency notice” requirement: contracting authorities must publish a notice before making a direct award, allowing a challenge period. This is a procedural improvement — it creates a formal record and a window for market challenge — but it does not require competition.
The National Audit Office’s 2025 review of the Act’s first year of operation found that compliance with transparency notice requirements was “variable,” with a significant minority of direct awards not preceded by published notices. The review also noted that the Act did not change the underlying conditions under which direct award was permissible — only the process surrounding it.
The Cabinet Office told Exposed News: “The Procurement Act 2023 represents a fundamental reform of how government buys goods and services, with greater transparency and stronger requirements to justify non-competitive awards. We continue to monitor compliance and will take action where requirements are not met.”