New assessment summary rules: what they mean for losing bidders

One of the quieter but more meaningful changes introduced by the Procurement Act 2023 is the mandatory assessment summary. If you've submitted a bid since the Act came into force and been unsuccessful, you are now legally entitled to receive a structured written summary of how your response was evaluated.

This isn't a courtesy. It's a legal requirement on the buyer, and understanding what it means for you could change how you approach every bid you write from here.

What the assessment summary must include

Under the Procurement Act 2023, contracting authorities must issue an assessment summary to every unsuccessful supplier. The summary must explain how the supplier's bid was assessed against the published award criteria and, where applicable, how it compared to the winning bid.

This goes significantly further than what was required under the old Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Under the old rules, suppliers had to request feedback, and what they received varied enormously in quality. Some buyers gave detailed, useful breakdowns. Others sent a brief letter confirming the outcome and little else.

The new requirement standardises the floor. Every unsuccessful bidder gets a summary, whether they ask for one or not.

What it should tell you

A properly prepared assessment summary should show you how your bid scored against each criterion, the scores or ratings used in the evaluation and enough narrative to understand why you received the score you did. For quality criteria, that means some explanation of what the evaluators found lacking, not just a number.

It should also give you a meaningful basis for comparison: either explicitly showing the winning score or enough information for you to understand the gap.

How to use it

The most valuable thing you can do with an assessment summary is treat it as a structured debrief rather than a letter of rejection. Work through it methodically against your original response.

Where scores were lower than expected, ask yourself whether the evaluator's reading of your answer was reasonable, even if it wasn't what you intended. Often the issue isn't that your content was wrong, but that it wasn't structured in a way that made the relevant points easy to find and score.

Pay particular attention to any criteria where you scored significantly below the winning bid. If social value or a technical methodology question has a 25% weighting and you scored poorly against it, that's where your next bid needs the most work.

Keep a record of every summary you receive. Over time they become a pattern. Patterns tell you more than any individual feedback can.

If the summary isn't good enough

The Act also gives unsuccessful suppliers the right to request a debrief meeting with the contracting authority. Buyers must offer this if asked. If the written summary doesn't give you enough to understand the outcome, request the meeting. It's your right, and most procurement teams will engage constructively.

If you believe the evaluation was flawed or the summary is inadequate, there are challenge mechanisms available under the Act. These are worth understanding before you need them rather than after.