UK Construction and Law

Supplier complaints about public buyers rose by more than half in the first full year of the new procurement rules

By Staff Writer  |  22 August 2026

The Cabinet Office published its annual progress report on public procurement oversight on 20 August. The Public Procurement Review Service took 136 new cases in the year to 5 April 2026 against 89 the year before, a rise of 52.8 per cent, and unblocked 380,970.82 pounds of late payments at a 100 per cent success rate on valid undisputed invoices. Payment remains the single most reported issue.

The report covers 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026 and is the fifteenth in the series. It is the first to cover a full year under the Procurement Act 2023, and the rise in cases is attributed to public sector buyers adjusting to the new rules rather than to any deterioration in supplier behaviour. Sixty one per cent of cases, 83 of them, came from suppliers using the service for the first time.

The service takes complaints from suppliers, and from their representatives, about a particular procurement or about contract management, including late payment of valid and undisputed invoices on a public sector contract. Late payment means outside 30 calendar days or outside whatever the contract states. A supplier may raise a case anonymously. The issue must have arisen within the last two years.

What was actually recovered

The amount released in the year was 380,970.82 pounds, up 15.9 per cent in value on the previous year, with a 100 per cent success rate on valid and undisputed invoices. Cumulative funds unblocked since the service began stand at 13.8 million pounds. Payment cases themselves fell by 12.5 per cent even as the overall caseload rose. Recommendations are not binding, and the service intervened in time to cause adjustments to live procurements in two instances.

Cases met the service standard in 86.6 per cent of instances, meaning resolution within two months for central government and three months for wider public sector bodies. Of surveyed suppliers, 92.6 per cent would use the service again, and 90.5 per cent of contracting authorities found its advice and recommendations useful.

Cases raised against central government rose from 16 to 27, and against the wider public sector from 67 to 78. A further 150 general enquiries were handled against 90 the year before. Of those enquiries, 62 were nothing to do with a procurement process and were signposted elsewhere, 35 fell outside the service's remit, 11 produced no response to requests for further information, four went to the devolved administrations, seven went to the debarment service and two were passed to the compliance service.

The second service, and why it matters more

A separate Procurement Compliance Service began accepting referrals in February 2026. It uses the statutory powers in Part 10 of the Procurement Act 2023 to investigate whether a contracting authority is complying with the Act at an institutional or systemic level, rather than looking at a single procurement decision. Anyone may refer to it, not only a supplier with an interest.

It received ten referrals to 31 March 2026. The early pattern was transparency at 30 per cent, direct awards at 20 per cent and contract modifications at 20 per cent. Its findings and recommendations are captured in a report that may be published, and an authority may be asked for progress reports and action plans that may also be published. It cannot make recommendations about an authority's compliance with the procurement objectives in section 12, the National Procurement Policy Statement, the duty to consider smaller businesses in below threshold contracts under section 86, or the exercise of an authority's discretion in a procurement.

Our priorities for 2026/27 are centred on establishing an active feedback loop with contracting authorities.

Professor Barry Hooper, Director of Strategy, Assurance and Standards

Andrew Forzani, the Government Chief Commercial Officer and non-executive chair of the Government Commercial Agency board, writes in the foreword that the year marks the point at which the oversight powers introduced by the Act took effect and the service moved from one arm to two.

For a construction supplier on a public contract the practical position has not changed in substance, but the second door has widened. The review service is still the route for an unpaid invoice on a particular job. The compliance service is the route for a buyer that keeps doing the same thing, and its output is a published report rather than a private letter.