The Procurement Act 2023 went live on 24 February 2025. If you run a design, digital, or creative agency with public sector work in your portfolio — or you'd like to have some — this matters more than most people in the industry realise.
It's not just a legal housekeeping exercise. It changes where contracts are published, introduces a new type of notice that gives early visibility of upcoming work, and consolidates the fragmented, confusing procurement landscape into a single platform. The agencies that understand the new system will spot opportunities faster. The ones that don't will continue scanning five portals and still miss things.
Here's what actually changed.
The old system was a mess. That's been fixed (mostly).
Before February 2025, UK public procurement notices were scattered across multiple platforms. Find a Tender Service (FTS) handled above-threshold contracts. Contracts Finder handled below-threshold contracts and had its own quirks. Local councils often published on their own portals. NHS trusts used various frameworks. There was no single place to look.
The Procurement Act 2023 changed this. From 24 February 2025, all new procurement notices — both above and below threshold — must be published on an enhanced version of the Find a Tender Service, which is now the central hub for the new Central Digital Platform.
Contracts Finder is no longer required. Procurements that began from 24 February 2025 onwards only require notices on FTS. Contracts Finder remains accessible for procurements started under the old regime, but nothing new lands there.
For design agencies, this is good news in theory: one place to check. In practice, volume is still patchy and manual scanning is still time-consuming — but at least the signal and the noise are in one place.
Pipeline Notices: the biggest change you've probably missed
The most significant new feature for smaller suppliers is the pipeline notice (officially called a UK1 notice).
Here's how it works. Any contracting authority that expects to spend more than £100 million on goods, services, or works in the coming financial year must now publish an annual pipeline notice listing their upcoming contracts above £2 million. These are forward-looking: they give you visibility of what a council, NHS trust, or government department intends to procure over the next 18 months.
The pipeline notice regime went live on 1 April 2025. Why does this matter for design agencies? Because for the first time, you can see what's coming before it's published as a live tender. A council that's planning a website redevelopment, a digital transformation programme, or a service design project in Q3 is now supposed to signal that in their pipeline notice months in advance.
This means the game isn't just "react to live tenders before the deadline." It's "know what's coming, warm up your relationships, and be ready to bid well."
Transparency notices: more visibility, more complexity
The Act also introduced a suite of new transparency notice requirements. These are worth knowing about because they create both opportunities and noise:
Contract award notices are now required to be published within 30 days of a contract being entered into (or 120 days for lighter-touch contracts). For contracts worth £5 million or more, the actual contract document must be published within 90 days.
Transparency notices are published when a contracting authority intends to make a direct award without a competitive process — for example, under an existing framework or in urgent circumstances. For suppliers, this is useful intelligence: it tells you a buyer is about to award work directly, which may indicate they have an incumbent relationship you need to compete against next time.
Planned procurement notices allow buyers to signal upcoming procurements and set a minimum 40-day window for suppliers to prepare before a tender is formally launched.
The net effect: there's more public data about procurement activity than there's ever been. The problem is filtering it.
What hasn't changed
Frameworks still dominate. A significant portion of design and digital public sector work goes through Crown Commercial Service frameworks (G-Cloud, the Digital Outcomes & Specialists successor, and similar). The Procurement Act doesn't fundamentally change how frameworks operate, though the new "competitive flexible procedure" gives buyers more latitude to design bespoke procurement approaches.
The volume of design-specific tenders is still low. Across Contracts Finder and FTS, genuinely relevant design and digital tenders — the kind that match what a 10–50 person agency can credibly compete for — appear at a rate of roughly one to two per week nationally. The Act improves transparency, not volume.
You still need to be registered. The Central Digital Platform includes a new Supplier Information System. Registering your agency there makes you discoverable and reduces the administrative burden of repeated self-certification across different bids.
What you should do now
Practical checklist
- Register on the Central Digital Platform. Go to find-tender.service.gov.uk and create your supplier profile. This is now the system of record for all government procurement. Takes around 30 minutes.
- Check the pipeline notices for your priority buyers. If you have councils, NHS trusts, or departments you'd like to work with, search for their pipeline notices on FTS. Free early intelligence — most agencies still aren't using it.
- Set up search alerts on FTS. FTS allows saved searches. Set alerts for "user research", "service design", "digital", "website", and your relevant CPV codes.
- Understand the new notice sequence. Under the new regime, you may see a planned procurement notice (early warning), then an invitation to tender, then a contract award notice. Following this for buyers you care about gives you more preparation time.
- Stop relying on Contracts Finder. If it's been your primary source, switch to FTS. New procurements since February 2025 don't appear there.
The Procurement Act 2023 went live on 24 February 2025. If you run a design, digital, or creative agency with public sector work in your portfolio — or you'd like to have some — this matters more than most people in the industry realise.
It's not just a legal housekeeping exercise. It changes where contracts are published, introduces a new type of notice that gives early visibility of upcoming work, and consolidates the fragmented, confusing procurement landscape into a single platform. The agencies that understand the new system will spot opportunities faster. The ones that don't will continue scanning five portals and still miss things.
Here's what actually changed.
The old system was a mess. That's been fixed (mostly).
Before February 2025, UK public procurement notices were scattered across multiple platforms. Find a Tender Service (FTS) handled above-threshold contracts. Contracts Finder handled below-threshold contracts and had its own quirks. Local councils often published on their own portals. NHS trusts used various frameworks. There was no single place to look.
The Procurement Act 2023 changed this. From 24 February 2025, all new procurement notices — both above and below threshold — must be published on an enhanced version of the Find a Tender Service, which is now the central hub for the new Central Digital Platform.
Contracts Finder is no longer required. Procurements that began from 24 February 2025 onwards only require notices on FTS. Contracts Finder remains accessible for procurements started under the old regime, but nothing new lands there.
For design agencies, this is good news in theory: one place to check. In practice, volume is still patchy and manual scanning is still time-consuming — but at least the signal and the noise are in one place.
Pipeline Notices: the biggest change you've probably missed
The most significant new feature for smaller suppliers is the pipeline notice (officially called a UK1 notice).
Here's how it works. Any contracting authority that expects to spend more than £100 million on goods, services, or works in the coming financial year must now publish an annual pipeline notice listing their upcoming contracts above £2 million. These are forward-looking: they give you visibility of what a council, NHS trust, or government department intends to procure over the next 18 months.
The pipeline notice regime went live on 1 April 2025. Why does this matter for design agencies? Because for the first time, you can see what's coming before it's published as a live tender. A council that's planning a website redevelopment, a digital transformation programme, or a service design project in Q3 is now supposed to signal that in their pipeline notice months in advance.
This means the game isn't just "react to live tenders before the deadline." It's "know what's coming, warm up your relationships, and be ready to bid well."
Transparency notices: more visibility, more complexity
The Act also introduced a suite of new transparency notice requirements. These are worth knowing about because they create both opportunities and noise:
Contract award notices are now required to be published within 30 days of a contract being entered into (or 120 days for lighter-touch contracts). For contracts worth £5 million or more, the actual contract document must be published within 90 days.
Transparency notices are published when a contracting authority intends to make a direct award without a competitive process — for example, under an existing framework or in urgent circumstances. For suppliers, this is useful intelligence: it tells you a buyer is about to award work directly, which may indicate they have an incumbent relationship you need to compete against next time.
Planned procurement notices allow buyers to signal upcoming procurements and set a minimum 40-day window for suppliers to prepare before a tender is formally launched.
The net effect: there's more public data about procurement activity than there's ever been. The problem is filtering it.
What hasn't changed
Frameworks still dominate. A significant portion of design and digital public sector work goes through Crown Commercial Service frameworks (G-Cloud, the Digital Outcomes & Specialists successor, and similar). The Procurement Act doesn't fundamentally change how frameworks operate, though the new "competitive flexible procedure" gives buyers more latitude to design bespoke procurement approaches.
The volume of design-specific tenders is still low. Across Contracts Finder and FTS, genuinely relevant design and digital tenders — the kind that match what a 10–50 person agency can credibly compete for — appear at a rate of roughly one to two per week nationally. The Act improves transparency, not volume.
You still need to be registered. The Central Digital Platform includes a new Supplier Information System. Registering your agency there makes you discoverable and reduces the administrative burden of repeated self-certification across different bids.
What you should do now
Practical checklist
- Register on the Central Digital Platform. Go to find-tender.service.gov.uk and create your supplier profile. This is now the system of record for all government procurement. Takes around 30 minutes.
- Check the pipeline notices for your priority buyers. If you have councils, NHS trusts, or departments you'd like to work with, search for their pipeline notices on FTS. Free early intelligence — most agencies still aren't using it.
- Set up search alerts on FTS. FTS allows saved searches. Set alerts for "user research", "service design", "digital", "website", and your relevant CPV codes.
- Understand the new notice sequence. Under the new regime, you may see a planned procurement notice (early warning), then an invitation to tender, then a contract award notice. Following this for buyers you care about gives you more preparation time.
- Stop relying on Contracts Finder. If it's been your primary source, switch to FTS. New procurements since February 2025 don't appear there.
The honest problem: volume vs. noise
The new system is better. But it doesn't solve the fundamental problem facing design and digital agencies: signal-to-noise ratio.
FTS publishes thousands of notices a week. The vast majority are irrelevant — construction, catering, HR services, IT infrastructure, logistics. Finding the handful of design-relevant tenders in that volume requires either significant manual effort or a smarter filter.
Pipeline notices help, but they require you to know which buyers to follow. And manually tracking pipeline notices across dozens of contracting authorities is its own job.
This is the problem Tandara is built to solve. We monitor FTS and the UK public procurement system continuously, filter for opportunities that match your agency's profile, and deliver them to you directly — so you're not spending hours scanning portals or missing the tenders that were right for you.
If you want early access, join the Tandara waitlist. We're onboarding UK design and digital agencies now.