The covered procurement objectives at section 12: what the duty to have regard actually requires

The key facts

• Section 12 of the Procurement Act 2023 establishes clear objectives for contracting authorities.
• The duty is to have regard to those objectives, rather than to achieve a fixed outcome.
• The duty applies in the undertaking of covered procurement.
• Covered procurement means the award, entry into and management of a public contract, so the duty reaches beyond the tendering stage.
• The guidance is technical and is aimed at procurement practitioners and commercial policy leads in contracting authorities.
• The guidance documents should be read in conjunction with the Procurement Act 2023 and its associated regulations.
• The guidance instructs readers to make sure they read the guidance documents in full.

What this guidance is and who it applies to

This document sits in the Cabinet Office series of technical guidance published to support the Procurement Act 2023. It addresses the objectives that section 12 of the Act establishes for contracting authorities. As with the rest of the series, the guidance is written for procurement practitioners and commercial policy leads inside contracting authorities, and it is intended to help with interpretation and understanding of the Act rather than to replace it.

The guidance repeats the instruction that runs through the whole series: the documents should be read in conjunction with the Procurement Act 2023 and its associated regulations, and readers should make sure they read the guidance documents in full. For a topic like the objectives, where the substance sits in the statutory wording, that instruction carries real weight.

The audience in practice extends past procurement teams. Because the objectives shape how a procurement is framed, evaluated and defended, service leads, finance and internal audit all have an interest in how an organisation interprets and evidences the duty.

What section 12 does

The guidance states the position simply: section 12 of the Act establishes clear objectives which contracting authorities must have regard to in the undertaking of covered procurement. Three elements of that sentence matter and are worth separating out.

The first is that the objectives are established in statute rather than set out in policy. They are not optional good practice that an organisation can adopt or decline. They sit in the Act itself, and the duty attached to them is a legal one.

The second is the form of the duty. It is a duty to have regard, not a duty to deliver a specified result. That is a familiar formulation in public law. It requires the objectives to be genuinely considered and taken into account in decision making, with the weight given to them being a matter for the authority in the circumstances. It does not permit them to be ignored, treated as boilerplate, or acknowledged only after the substantive decisions have already been made.

The third is the scope. The duty bites in the undertaking of covered procurement. Because covered procurement means the award, entry into and management of a public contract, the duty is not confined to the period between publishing a notice and issuing an award decision.

Why it matters

A statutory duty to have regard changes what a procurement file has to show. Where objectives sat in policy, an organisation could point to the policy and rely on general adherence. Where they sit in the Act, the question becomes whether this particular authority, on this particular procurement, actually turned its mind to them. That is a question about evidence, and evidence has to be created contemporaneously.

It also changes where in the process the thinking has to happen. Considering statutory objectives only at the evaluation stage is too late to be meaningful, because most of the choices that determine whether the objectives can be met are made earlier, when the requirement is defined, the route to market is selected and the packaging is decided.

Because the duty runs across the undertaking of covered procurement, it also has implications for contract management. Decisions taken after award, on variations, extensions and performance, sit within the same overall activity that the Act describes as covered procurement.

Applying it in practice

The most reliable way to satisfy a have regard duty is to make it a visible step in the process rather than an assumed background condition. That usually means a short, dated record at the strategy stage showing which objectives were considered, what they implied for this specific procurement, and what was decided as a result, including where a competing consideration outweighed them.

Generic text repeated across every procurement is the weakest possible evidence. It shows the words were present, not that the objectives were considered. Records that name a concrete consequence for the procurement in question, a decision about lotting, a choice of procedure, a change to the timetable, are far more persuasive.

Because this guidance is short and points to the statute for the substance, teams should work directly from section 12 itself when writing their templates. The guidance is an aid to interpretation. The obligation and the objectives themselves are in the Act, and the guidance says clearly that it should be read alongside the legislation.

How eSourcing Data helps

A duty to have regard is only as strong as the record behind it. eSourcing Data builds the consideration step into the procurement workflow, so that a dated record of how the statutory objectives were taken into account is created at the point the decisions are made rather than assembled afterwards when a challenge or an audit forces the question.

Because the platform holds the full procurement record in one place, from requirement definition and route to market through evaluation to award and contract management, the evidence follows the same arc as the duty itself. Post award decisions on variations and extensions are captured alongside the original rationale, which matters given that covered procurement extends to the management of the contract.

Reporting across the portfolio adds the assurance layer. Rather than checking individual files by hand, commercial leads and internal audit can see where objective considerations have been recorded, spot procurements that have skipped the step, and identify where template wording has been repeated without any procurement specific reasoning behind it.

What to do about it

1. 1Work directly from section 12 of the Act when building your objectives templates, and read the guidance in full alongside it.
2. 2Add an explicit objectives consideration step at the procurement strategy stage, before the route to market is fixed.
3. 3Record what each objective meant for this specific procurement, not generic wording repeated across files.
4. 4Document the reasoning where another consideration was given greater weight, since the duty is to have regard rather than to achieve a set outcome.
5. 5Extend the record into contract management decisions such as variations and extensions.
6. 6Spot check completed files periodically to confirm the step is being done substantively rather than ticked.
7. 7Brief service leads and budget holders, since many of the decisions that affect the objectives are made outside the procurement team.