REUTERS | Lisi Niesner
13/03/2013

Public procurement case digest (February 2013)

 

PLC Public Sector reports:

Our February 2013 case digest includes details of the decision in Montpellier Estates Ltd v Leeds City Council, where the High Court considered a challenge to the Council’s decision to abandon its competitive dialogue and instead proceed with its public sector comparator.

Please feel free to submit a comment below or contact us at: feedback@practicallaw.com if you have any views on the cases covered or think that we have missed a case that should be brought to the attention of public procurement practitioners.

Continue reading →

REUTERS | Mike Blake
13/03/2013

Back by popular demand: the new NHS procurement regulations

Simon Taylor, Keating Chambers:

In this post, Simon examines the changes in the new NHS (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No 2) Regulations 2013 (the NHS Regulations).

For his analysis of the old regulations, see Article, New procurement regulations for NHS healthcare services: big bang or evolutionary competition?

Continue reading →

06/03/2013

Health and Social Care Act 2012: quarterly digest (December 2012 – February 2013)

PLC Public Sector reports:

This is the first of our new series of quarterly update blogs on the changes to the NHS and local government introduced by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (HCSA 2012).

In this post, we look at the latest developments regarding NHS procurement, the transfer of public health functions, the new scrutiny regime for health services and the licensing regime to be overseen by Monitor.

Continue reading →

REUTERS | Mike Blake
27/02/2013

Limiting Lianakis: the selection/award dichotomy revisited

Warsha Kalé, Associate Director, and Stuart Stock, Associate, Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP:

Partnering and alliance arrangements in both the public and private sectors are increasingly common. In such situations, the contracting authority is looking to procure a “partner” rather than simply goods, services or works, although the partner may subsequently provide such goods, services or works as part of the arrangement.

This creates uncertainty when trying to maintain the rigorous distinction between the criteria that can be tested at the selection and award stages of a procurement under the Public Contracts Regulations 2006 (the PCRs) and the EU Directive (Directive 2004/18/EC). Such arrangements necessarily require partners to possess certain attributes in order to perform the actual contract and make the relationship work. However, under a strict interpretation of the rules, evidence that proposed partners possess such attributes may only be tested when pre-qualifying bidders, and not at the award stage.

Continue reading →

REUTERS | Ronen Zvulun
20/02/2013

Public procurement policy review: 2013 so far

PLC Public Sector reports:

This is the first of a new series of posts on key developments in public procurement policy in the UK that lawyers advising in this area need to be aware of.  It will not consider case law, which is covered in our monthly public procurement case digest.

In this first edition, we look at the developments we have seen so far in 2013.  Subscribers to Practical Law can keep up to date with latest public procurement developments by signing up to the PLC Public Sector e-mail update (available weekly) or the PLC Competition e-mail updates (available daily).  Continue reading →