Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what guidance they have issued on whether the requirement to publish pipeline notices for frameworks under section 93 of the Procurement Act 2023 accounts for the cumulative value of call-offs that individually fall below £2 million but collectively exceed that threshold, and on how contracting authorities should manage such scenarios to ensure compliance.

A framework is a contract between a contracting authority and one or more suppliers that provides for the future award of contracts by a contracting authority to the supplier or suppliers.

Where a contracting authority is establishing a framework, it needs to assess the value over the lifetime of the framework from any resulting awards in accordance with that framework. This will usually be assessed based on commercial requirements. If the total amount of estimated individual awards is over £2m, this framework should be included on a pipeline notice.

Guidance has been issued on a range of topics relating to the Procurement Act 2023 and there is a specific piece of guidance that relates to the Pipeline Notice.