How to challenge a procurement decision, and the clock you are on

This explains how the process works and what the time limits are. It is not legal advice, and the deadlines below are short enough that if you are seriously considering a challenge, the first call should be to a solicitor who does this work, today rather than tomorrow.

The two clocks

Standstill: eight working days

When a buyer decides who has won an above-threshold contract, they publish a contract award notice and then must not sign anything for a period of eight working days beginning with the day that notice is published. Working days: weekends and bank holidays across the UK nations do not count.

That window exists precisely so the decision can be questioned before it becomes a signed contract. A challenge issued and notified during standstill triggers an automatic suspension that stops the buyer signing until it is resolved, withdrawn, or the court lifts it. After signature, the practical remedy usually becomes damages rather than the contract.

Standstill is not mandatory for everything. Call-offs under frameworks, contracts awarded through dynamic markets, light touch contracts, and direct awards made for extreme urgency or to protect life are among the exemptions. Buyers may apply a voluntary standstill anyway, and often do.

Proceedings: 30 days

Court proceedings must generally be started within 30 days beginning with the day you first knew, or ought to have known, about the circumstances giving rise to the claim.

Read that carefully, because it is not 30 days from the award notice. It runs from when you knew or should have known. If the problem was visible in the tender documents in March, the clock may have started in March. The court can extend a time limit where there is good reason, but that is a concession to ask for, not a plan.

Where the remedy sought is setting a contract aside, the limit is the earlier of that 30 days and six months from the day the contract was entered into or modified.

What you are entitled to before deciding

In a competitive procedure the buyer issues assessment summaries to successful and unsuccessful suppliers before the contract award notice goes out. That document is the raw material: it tells you how your tender was assessed and, crucially, against what.

If you did not get one, or it does not explain the decision, asking for it is the first step and it is free. Most questions end there, either because the reasoning is sound, or because the buyer spots their own error when asked to write it down.

The realistic ladder

1. Read the assessment summary against the tender documents. Scores that do not match the published criteria, or criteria that were not published at all, are the common problems.
2. Ask the buyer, in writing, immediately. Say you are asking within standstill. Be specific about which score or which criterion. Dated correspondence matters later.
3. Take advice if the answer does not hold up. Before the eight working days are out, not after.
4. Proceedings. Rare, expensive, and occasionally the only thing that works. A claim issued during standstill is in a materially stronger position than one issued after signature.

Being honest about the odds

Most losing bids lose because they were not the best bid. The reason to read the assessment summary is nearly always to find out what to do differently next time, which is worth doing every single time, whether or not anything looks wrong.

A challenge is worth considering when something specific and identifiable went wrong: a criterion applied that was never published, an arithmetic error, a winning bid that does not meet a mandatory requirement you were held to. “We should have won” is not one of those.

If the same buyer keeps coming out the wrong way, their award history is public and it is here, who they buy from, how often, and for how much. That is sometimes a more useful answer than a challenge.