Insight
Thought leadership on UK public sector procurement, AI, and what it takes to win government contracts.
There is a new paper in the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management that I think should be read by anyone selling into government. It came out in June, it is open access, and it contains a finding that runs directly against how most businesses organise their bid function. The short version: being a bit proactive about public sector opportunities is worse than not being proactive at all.
On Wednesday the Cabinet Office published PPN 026. A procurement policy note is an instruction to government buyers about how to run their tenders. Not a law, but departments have to follow it, so in practice it decides how your bid gets marked. This one replaces the entire social value model from 1 January 2027, and it's the biggest change to how bids are scored since 2020.
A Supplier's Guide to UK1 to UK17 (2026)
UK tender notices are the numbered announcements (UK1 to UK17) that public sector buyers must publish at each stage of a contract's life under the Procurement Act 2023. UK4 is the tender notice itself, the one everyone watches. The other sixteen are where the real advantage sits, because they tell you what's coming, who holds the contract now, how well they're performing, and whether the buyer pays on time.
Here's what he can do instead
"Buying British not if possible, but by design." That was John Healey in his first speech to Treasury staff, five days into the job. He repeated it to The Sun at the weekend, adding that this would be "a determined drive that you have not seen before from a British government." I want to take the announcement more seriously than a soundbite, and be more precise than a slogan. The interesting question isn't whether the Chancellor means it. It's what he can actually do, and what he can't.
A Plain English Guide for UK Suppliers (2026)
CPV codes classify every UK public sector tender. Learn how they work, why buyers get them wrong, and how to build alerts that don't miss contracts.
There was a headline doing the rounds last week that a lot of people in public sector sales will have skimmed as a health story or a Westminster story. It is neither. It is a procurement story, and it is one of the clearest signals yet of where the whole market is going.
This morning Sir Keir Starmer stood outside Number 10 and said he'll resign as Labour leader. But the question I care about isn't the Westminster psychodrama. It's this: what would a Burnham premiership do to public sector procurement?
Seven changes that tilt public sector buying towards SMEs, from our webinar with Matt Spencer.
Fifteen months after the Procurement Act went live, the effects are showing up in real tenders. We ran a webinar with public sector sales veteran Matt Spencer on what's changed: seven SME-friendly shifts, new departmental spend targets, and a five-step playbook. Recording included.
Here's what it means for British firms.
The Chancellor has named AI critical to national security and put an enforcement mechanism behind 'Buy British'. Here's what it means for the people who sell, write bids, and run businesses in the public sector.
Most people missed it.
DSIT's £80m Sovereign AI R&D programme is procurement being used as industrial policy, with founder-friendly IP terms and a clear map of where government AI budgets are heading next.