Your framework award criteria are a four year decision: reading the Procurement Act guidance on frameworks
Frameworks feel familiar, which is why the Procurement Act guidance on them catches people out. The mechanics look like the old regime with tidier language, so teams reuse their templates and move on. Underneath, a handful of rules have shifted the centre of gravity from the call-off back to the framework itself. The clearest is this: when a call-off is competed, assessment must be based only on some or all of the award criteria used when the framework was awarded. Whatever you leave out at framework stage, no buyer can reintroduce for the life of the framework.
Design at the top, not the bottom
Under a competitive selection process the authority can refine the framework criteria with sub criteria, but it cannot introduce new criteria. That makes the framework award the moment where flexibility is either created or destroyed. If social value, delivery model, sustainability or service integration might matter to a call-off buyer in year three, those things need to be criteria in year one.
The same forward thinking applies to the selection process itself. The framework must specify the process to be used for call-offs, and where call-offs will be awarded without competition it must contain an objective mechanism for selecting the supplier plus the core terms of the call-off. The guidance offers a taxi rank rotation or a highest ranking system with limits on the number or value of contracts going to one supplier. What it does not allow is deciding later, informally, how work will be shared out.
Open frameworks reward operators, not projects
The open framework is the genuinely new instrument. A scheme of successive frameworks on substantially the same terms, running up to 8 years, re opened at least once in the first 3 years and then at least every 5 years, with one framework expiring as the next is awarded. Re opening is a floor, not a ceiling, and the guidance explicitly contemplates an annual re opening.
That answers the oldest complaint about frameworks, which is that a supplier who missed the window waits four years for the next one. It also creates a management burden that many authorities are not resourced for, because each re opening is a real procurement event with its own tender documents, assessment and awards. The guidance sensibly tells authorities to set out the re opening procedure in the tender documents from the start. Watch section 49(6) as well: if the scheme narrows to a single supplier, the maximum term becomes 4 years from that point rather than 8 years from the first award.
The call-off checks people skip
Two obligations get missed with depressing regularity. The first is exclusion status. It was checked at framework award, so teams assume it is settled. The guidance requires the authority to assess status before each call-off award, and section 48(1) lets a framework include an implied term to remove a supplier that becomes excludable. Suppliers change between year one and year four, and the framework list is not a permanent clearance.
The second is the contract award notice. These are required for all call-offs bar defence and security contracts under a defence and security framework and direct award user choice contracts, and regulation 34 adds specific content: the framework's unique identifier, whether it is a defence and security framework, the lot, the award route, and where there was no competition the justification under section 45(4). Below threshold call-offs are not exempt from transparency either, since a notifiable below threshold contract still needs a contract details notice under regulation 36.
Where standstill is a choice worth making
Assessment summaries and mandatory standstill do not apply to call-off awards. That is a real efficiency, and for routine low value call-offs it should simply be used. The mistake is treating it as a rule for every call-off, including the seven figure award where two capable suppliers were separated by a point and a half.
The guidance keeps the door open: an authority may choose to provide assessment summaries and to observe a voluntary standstill. On contested awards that choice buys something valuable, which is a period in which a disappointed supplier can raise a concern before the contract is signed rather than after. Combined with a proper record of how the framework criteria and any sub criteria were applied, it is the cheapest risk control available under the new regime.
The takeaways
- Call-off criteria must come from the framework award criteria, so scope them generously at the outset.
- If call-offs will not be competed, the framework needs an objective selection mechanism and the core terms in writing.
- Open frameworks run to 8 years with re openings in the first 3 years and then at least every 5, and drop to a 4 year cap if they become single supplier.
- Re check exclusion status before every call-off award and publish a contract award notice with the regulation 34 content.
- Standstill is optional at call-off, but worth taking voluntarily on high value or closely contested awards.
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