The Legal Framework

The Legal Framework

All public procurement in the UK is governed by the EU Treaty and the EU Procurement Directives and UK Procurement Regulations that implement the Directives. This legal framework helps to ensure that public procurement is conducted in a fair and open manner both within the UK and across the EU. In this section you'll find the EU Directives, the UK Regulations and further information on key aspects of the legal framework:

• EU Procurement Directives
• Consultations on EU Directives
• Introduction to the EU Rules (PDF, 288KB)
• The UK Regulations
• Guidance on the UK Regulations
• EU Thresholds
• Devolved Administrations
• Latest updates in EU and international developments
• Specific Application Issues

SIMAP - Is the Gateway to European Public Procurement containing useful information and tools. Please visit the website to access:

• Standard forms for OJEU notices (contract notice/contract award notice)
• CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) Codes for insertion into standard forms.  Updated codes will come into force on 15 September 2008 and can be accessed via the eur-lex website. Amending regulations will be made to change the existing references to CPV codes in the Public Contract Regulations and Utilities Contracts Regulations codes to reflect the revised codes. 
• TED - Tenders Electronic Daily - (Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union) which publishes calls for tenders, contract awards and pre-information notices for public procurement.

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If you are looking for a specific document or guidance on a specific topic you can use the search engine at the top of this page. For further information or guidance please contact the OGC Service Desk on 0845 0004999.