Public Procurement
The yearly report from the Department for Health and Social Care makes for grim reading in what concerns Covid-related procurement, with the headline figure being the loss of £8.7 billion of the £12.1 billion of PPE spent in the financial year of 2020-21. Over half of the loss
Public Procurement
The High Court has just handed down a landmark ruling considering some contracts awarded via the UK government VIP route as illegal, namely those with PestFix and Ayanda Capital. The judgment itself can be found here. Over the last two years (well, almost) I have taken a fairly stringent view
Public Procurement
Just yesterday, The Guardian reports that Labour's Angela Rayner obtaining information about the infamous VIP procurement route set up by the UK Government early on in the pandemic. Despite official protestations that each contract had been awarded after an 'eight step process' - whatever that means
Public Procurement
The UK Government has finally published its response to the consultation on the Procurement Green Paper which closed in March earlier this year with over 600 submissions. Predictably the summary of the response dwells on the positives and support for the changes proposed in the Green Paper, but to be
Public Procurement
The Caranta and Sanchez-Graells’ Commentary on Directive 2014/24/EU is finally out, published by Edward Elgar. This is a fairly sizeable and detailed commentary to the Directive and includes 4 entries (Arts 30, 59, 60 and 61).
Public Procurement
I've just been told that Prof Steen Treumer from Copenhagen University passed away. We all knew his disease would take him sooner than it should but I certainly wasn't expecting it to be this quick. Only last May we were making plans for meeting up in
Public Procurement
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has just published a report by Sascha Haselmayer about how procurement in cities should be reshaped to make it serve the citizens and not the bureaucracy. Here's part of the executive summary: "In 2021 alone, cities around the globe will spend
Public Procurement
I have spent the last 8 years or so arguing that 'community benefits' are nothing but a covert operation for what is protectionism of a more local nature and a gateway drug for ever more protectionism in a grander scale. What some contracting authorities (and countries as well,
Public Procurement
No sooner would I get my head around how one should go about and implement mandatory green public procurement (well in the EU at least) and the UK government ends up publishing a a new public procurement policy note on carbon reduction. This new guidance will mandate economic operators bidding
Public Procurement
Over the last few weeks or months I have been reflecting on the inevitability of the need to address climate change leading to a significant change on the way things are done. That includes public procurement (to an extent) and in that context I think the time is right to
Public Procurement
I’ve just published on SSRN an upcoming chapter for the European Procurement Law Series vol 11 on contract modifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Here’s the abstract: “This chapter focuses on the rules regarding public contract modifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as set by the
Public Procurement
I have posited many times in this blog (and elsewhere) that it is very possible a significant number of contracts awarded without competition in the UK as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic are illegal since the provisions of Regulation 32(2)(c) are not fully met. The key issue