Dynamic Markets: the next generation of flexible, compliant procurement

In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, all contracts awarded through a Dynamic Market must use the competitive flexible procedure, which is one of the new procurement procedures introduced by the Procurement Act 2023. Although Scotland retains its own procurement legislation, eligible Scottish authorities can use dynamic markets established under the Act through the cross-border arrangements. This is a significant difference from the DPS model, where contracting authorities used the restricted procedure or ran mini-competitions under more rigid rules. The competitive flexible procedure gives you considerably more freedom in how you structure and run each competition.

In practice, this means you can design a multi-stage process that suits the complexity of what you are buying. For a straightforward compliance contract, you might run a single-stage competition evaluated on quality and price. For a complex construction programme in an occupied NHS hospital or a multi-site decarbonisation retrofit across a trust’s school estate, you might include a selection stage to shortlist suppliers, followed by further evaluation, dialogue, or negotiation before final tenders are submitted. The procedure allows you to adapt the process to the requirement rather than forcing every procurement through the same rigid structure.

You set the evaluation criteria, the weightings, the number of stages, and the timeline for each competition. Inprova’s team supports you through the design and management of each process, ensuring it is compliant with the Procurement Act’s requirements around transparency, equal treatment, and proportionality while giving you the flexibility to get the best outcome for your specific project. This combination of an open supplier base and a flexible competition procedure is what makes Dynamic Markets the most versatile procurement route available under the new legislation.

In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Procurement Act 2023 addressed several limitations that held the DPS model back. Understanding these differences matters if you are deciding whether to continue using an existing DPS or move to a Dynamic Market for new procurement activity.

Scope is the most significant change. Under previous legislation, a DPS could only be used for purchases that were commonly available on the market, and whether a particular specialist construction, retrofit, or consultancy requirement qualified depended on the detail of that requirement rather than an automatic exclusion of the category. Dynamic Markets remove that restriction. Any type of goods, works, or services can be procured through one, giving contracting authorities a more straightforward route for bespoke and complex requirements without testing each one against the old commonly available purchase requirement.

Supplier management is also clearer. A contracting authority can remove a supplier from a Dynamic Market where that supplier meets one of the Act’s mandatory or discretionary exclusion grounds, which can include poor performance or breach of contract, but only once the relevant statutory grounds and removal procedure have been satisfied. Poor performance or a breach on its own is not sufficient. Under the DPS model, removing an underperforming supplier was procedurally difficult even where the grounds seemed clear. Dynamic Markets also allow contracting authorities to charge suppliers a fee when they are awarded a contract, enabling central purchasing bodies to sustain and develop their commercial tools. The qualification process is simplified, reducing delays for new suppliers joining, and the competitive flexible procedure replaces the more rigid procedures that applied to DPS competitions, giving buyers more control over how each procurement is structured and evaluated. For public sector organisations that found the DPS model useful but frustrating in its limitations, Dynamic Markets deliver the same core benefits with fewer constraints.

NHS trusts in England operate under two distinct procurement regimes simultaneously. The Provider Selection Regime, in force since January 2024, governs how NHS organisations arrange healthcare services for patients. The Procurement Act 2023 applies to everything else, including estates maintenance, construction, facilities management, compliance services, IT, and corporate services. Dynamic Markets fall under the Procurement Act and provide a compliant route for the non-clinical procurement categories where estates and facilities teams need reliable supplier access. This route is specific to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. NHS Scotland’s non-clinical procurement sits under Scotland’s own separate legislation, though under the cross-border arrangements now in force, an eligible devolved Scottish health board could use a Dynamic Market established under the Act where a UK-wide or cross-border requirement makes that the right route.

For NHS procurement teams, the practical advantage of a Dynamic Market is that it provides a pre-established compliant procurement vehicle for the Procurement Act categories without requiring the trust to build its own compliant processes from scratch. The competitive flexible procedure gives flexibility to tailor each competition to the specific constraints of healthcare procurement, including requirements around working in occupied clinical environments, infection control protocols, and out-of-hours delivery. Because Dynamic Markets stay permanently open, NHS trusts are not limited to the contractors who were available when the market was established. Specialist compliance contractors, decarbonisation installers, and construction firms with healthcare experience can join as they meet the membership conditions.

With NHS England’s net zero targets of 2040 for direct emissions and 2045 for the supply chain, and Carbon Reduction Plan requirements expanding to all suppliers by April 2027, the breadth of non-clinical procurement that NHS trusts need to manage compliantly is growing. Dynamic Markets provide the flexible, evolving procurement infrastructure that this demands.

In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Procurement Act 2023 introduced both Dynamic Markets and open frameworks as new procurement tools. They share some characteristics but serve different purposes, and understanding the distinction helps you choose the right route for each requirement.

Open frameworks allow new suppliers to join at defined intervals during the framework’s lifetime, typically through periodic re-opening windows. Between those windows, the supplier list is fixed. Pricing and terms are typically established at the point of appointment. Open frameworks are well suited to categories where a degree of supplier stability is valuable but you want the option to refresh the supply chain periodically rather than waiting for a full retender.

Dynamic Markets stay permanently open. There are no fixed re-opening windows. Any supplier that meets the published conditions for membership can apply and join at any time. You set your own pricing structure and evaluation criteria for each individual competition rather than working from pre-agreed terms. This makes Dynamic Markets better suited to categories where the supply chain is evolving continuously, where you need maximum flexibility in how you structure each procurement, or where access to the broadest possible supplier base for every competition matters.

In practice, many organisations will use both. An open framework might serve well for stable, high-volume categories like materials supply. A Dynamic Market might be the better choice for construction, decarbonisation, or specialist compliance services where the market is moving quickly and the specification varies significantly between projects. Inprova’s team can advise on which route fits each requirement.

A supplier can be removed from a Dynamic Market, but this is not automatic. Poor performance or a breach of contract on their own do not justify removal. The contracting authority has to establish that the supplier meets one of the Act’s mandatory or discretionary exclusion grounds and follow the required removal procedure before the supplier can be excluded.

Mandatory grounds include serious offences such as fraud, bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion, where exclusion is not discretionary. Discretionary grounds cover a broader range of issues, including poor performance on a previous public contract, breach of contract, and significant or persistent deficiencies in meeting substantive contractual obligations, but the contracting authority still has to assess the evidence against those grounds and follow the required process before removing a supplier from the market.

For public sector organisations managing critical services, this matters. An NHS trust relying on a compliance contractor for statutory fire safety testing, a school dependent on a heating contractor for term-time emergency response, or a council managing a major capital works programme cannot afford to be locked into a supply chain that includes contractors who have demonstrably failed to deliver. The ability to remove underperforming suppliers, once the statutory grounds are met, and replace them with new entrants who meet the membership conditions keeps the Dynamic Market supply chain actively managed rather than passively maintained. Inprova monitors supplier performance across all our procurement routes and can advise contracting authorities on the statutory grounds and evidence required where removal is being considered.

The Education Estates Strategy, published in February 2026, commits £38 billion from 2025-26 to 2029-30 to transform the education estate across England. This includes nearly £20 billion for the School Rebuilding Programme, £710 million for renewal and retrofit, £3.7 billion for SEND capital, and almost £3 billion per year for long-term maintenance by 2034-35. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland each run their own school capital investment programmes. For English schools, multi-academy trusts, and colleges accessing Education Estates Strategy funding specifically, the procurement challenge is spending it efficiently, compliantly, and at the pace that delivery timescales demand, and Dynamic Markets are available as a route in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to help meet that challenge.

Dynamic Markets are particularly well suited to this because they combine three things education institutions need: speed, flexibility, and compliance. The competitive flexible procedure allows you to design each competition around the specific requirements of each funded project rather than working within a fixed framework structure. The permanently open supplier base means you are not limited to contractors who were available when the procurement route launched, which matters when delivery timescales are tight and regional contractor availability varies. And because the Dynamic Market is an established compliant procurement vehicle under the Procurement Act 2023, the compliance documentation, audit trails, and transparency requirements are built in from the start.

With new estate management reporting requirements arriving from autumn 2026, education institutions also need procurement routes that generate structured, auditable data. Quantum tracks every contract awarded through our Dynamic Markets, providing the spend visibility, contract management, and performance evidence that the new reporting standards will require.

Local authorities manage the broadest range of building types and procurement categories in the public sector. Offices, leisure centres, libraries, schools, depots, care homes, and civic buildings each have different maintenance requirements, compliance profiles, and capital investment needs. In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Procurement Act 2023’s expanded transparency and reporting obligations add administrative burden to procurement teams that are already managing this breadth with constrained resource. The LGA estimates a cumulative funding gap of £6.2 billion across 2025/26 and 2026/27 in England alone, just to sustain services at current levels.

Dynamic Markets address this by providing a single compliant procurement route that works across the full range of categories a council procures. Because you set your own specification and evaluation criteria for each competition, the same Dynamic Market can serve a leisure centre heating replacement, a library accessibility improvement, and a depot roofing project without requiring three separate procurement routes. The permanently open supplier base means the contractors available for a competition in one region are not limited to those who were on the system when the market launched. Local SMEs and regional specialists can join at any time, supporting local economic participation.

For councils going through Local Government Reorganisation, Dynamic Markets provide continuity that standalone procurements do not. Any successor authority created through reorganisation can continue using the Dynamic Market without re-procurement, maintaining supplier access and programme continuity during a period of significant organisational change.

A Dynamic Market carries its own set of transparency requirements, separate from the notices around DPS expiry. A Dynamic Market notice is published when the market is established, and again if it is modified, for example if a new part is added, or when it is terminated. This means anyone can see which markets exist, what they cover, and the conditions for joining.

For each procurement run through the market, the contracting authority publishes a tender notice, confirming that the contract will be awarded by reference to membership of the market, or the relevant part of it. Before entering into the contract, the contracting authority must also publish a contract award notice. Unlike many framework call-offs, contract award notices for Dynamic Market awards must be accompanied by assessment summaries, giving suppliers who took part in the competition information about how their tender was assessed.

One difference from most above-threshold procurements is standstill. There is no mandatory eight-working-day standstill period for contracts awarded under a Dynamic Market. A contracting authority can choose to apply a voluntary standstill of at least eight working days if it wants to give suppliers a window to raise concerns before the contract is signed, but it is not required to. After the contract is entered into, a contract details notice is published confirming the award.

Inprova manages this notice cycle for every competition we run through our Dynamic Markets, so the audit trail is complete without your team needing to track each requirement separately.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, under the Procurement Act 2023’s transitional provisions, all Dynamic Purchasing Systems established before 24 February 2025 remain legally valid and fully operational. They will continue to run until they reach their natural expiry date, or until 23 February 2029, whichever comes first. After that date, no DPS established under the previous legislation can continue to operate. Any procurement route of this type must be established as a Dynamic Market under the new Act.

For public sector organisations currently using Inprova’s DPS solutions, this means you can continue procuring through them with confidence for now, and there is no immediate action required on your part. A DPS does not convert into a Dynamic Market automatically. When a DPS reaches its expiry date, or 23 February 2029, whichever comes first, a genuine replacement Dynamic Market has to be established under the Procurement Act 2023 rules. Our team manages that process on your behalf, including the new market notice, membership conditions, and qualification process, so you are not left without a compliant route. The procedure itself does change: procurements run through the new Dynamic Market use the competitive flexible procedure and the Act’s notice requirements rather than the process that applied under the DPS. What stays consistent is the level of support from our team and the visibility Quantum gives you over spend and performance.

Where the transition matters is in planning. If you are designing a multi-year capital programme or procurement strategy that extends beyond 2029, you should factor Dynamic Markets into that planning rather than assuming existing DPS solutions will still be available. Inprova’s team can advise on the transition timeline for each of our procurement routes and help you understand what, if anything, changes for your organisation. For new procurement activity, our Dynamic Markets are already operational under the Procurement Act 2023, so there is no reason to wait for the transition if a Dynamic Market route covers your requirement today.

Yes, and this is one of the features that makes Dynamic Markets practical for covering a broad range of procurement needs within a single compliant vehicle. A Dynamic Market can be divided into categories or parts, allowing you to organise suppliers by specialism, geography, value range, type of work, or any other logical grouping that reflects how you actually procure.

When you run a competition, you specify which part or parts of the Dynamic Market it relates to, and only suppliers who are members of those parts are eligible to participate. This means a Dynamic Market covering building works might have separate parts for general maintenance, electrical works, roofing, and painting, each with its own membership conditions and supplier base. A competition for electrical works would only go to suppliers admitted to that part, not to the entire market.

For public sector organisations managing diverse procurement portfolios, this structure provides the breadth of a single compliant procurement vehicle with the specificity of targeted supplier pools for each category. An NHS trust could access compliance specialists, construction contractors, and decarbonisation installers through different parts of the same Dynamic Market. A multi-academy trust could procure heating works from one part and fire safety services from another without needing separate procurement routes. The conditions for membership in each part must be proportionate to the contracts being awarded through it, with the Procurement Act requiring specific consideration for SME accessibility when setting those conditions.

In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Procurement Act 2023 places a stronger emphasis on SME access to public sector procurement than any previous legislation. The National Procurement Policy Statement sets an explicit expectation around SME participation for UK central government departments, and the government’s ambition is to award a third of central government contract spend to SMEs. Dynamic Markets are designed with these objectives built into their structure.

Because a Dynamic Market stays permanently open, SMEs and specialist contractors are not excluded by fixed tender deadlines that closed months or years ago. A business that was not established, did not have the track record, or did not have the capacity when a framework was originally tendered can apply to join a Dynamic Market as soon as it is ready. The Act also requires that conditions for membership are proportionate and do not disadvantage smaller organisations. Turnover requirements, insurance thresholds, and experience criteria must be set at a level that reflects the contracts being awarded, not inflated to a level that filters out capable SMEs.

In 2025, £193.5m of spend through Inprova went to SME suppliers, a record year, up 51% on 2024. Our Dynamic Markets continue this commitment by ensuring membership conditions are proportionate, regional parts give local businesses a meaningful route to compete, and the competitive flexible procedure allows you to weight quality and social value alongside price rather than defaulting to lowest cost. For public sector organisations with explicit SME spending targets, whether through the NPPS or their own procurement strategies, Dynamic Markets provide the structural mechanism to deliver on those commitments.

This is one of the practical questions that distinguishes Dynamic Markets from frameworks. I if a supplier who is not yet a member of the Dynamic Market wants to participate in a live competition, they can submit an application to join at the same time. The contracting authority must consider that application, provided there is sufficient time to do so before the competition closes.

In practice, this means a supplier could see a tender notice published for a competition through a Dynamic Market, apply for membership, be assessed against the published conditions, be admitted, and participate in the same competition. The contracting authority is not obligated to delay the competition to accommodate late applications, but must consider them if the timeline allows. This provision reflects the Procurement Act’s emphasis on keeping public procurement as open and accessible as possible, even during live competitions.

For buyers, this is a net positive. It means your competitions can attract suppliers you might not have known about, increasing the competitiveness of responses. For suppliers, particularly SMEs and specialist firms who may not have been monitoring the Dynamic Market for membership opportunities, it removes a barrier that would otherwise lock them out of a specific opportunity. Inprova’s team manages the membership assessment process alongside the competition timetable, so this provision works smoothly in practice without creating administrative complexity for your procurement team.

Yes, provided the charity meets the Act’s definition of a contracting authority. Under the Procurement Act 2023, an organisation qualifies if it is either wholly or mainly funded from public funds, or subject to the management or control of one or more public authorities, and it does not operate on a commercial basis. Holding contracts with public sector bodies, or delivering publicly funded services, does not by itself make a charity a contracting authority. What matters is the source and proportion of its funding, or the degree of oversight a public authority has over it, alongside whether it operates commercially, for example by bearing its own losses and competing in a market subject to fair competition.

Many charities and VCSE organisations do meet this definition, particularly those that receive the majority of their funding from public sources or that are established, and overseen, by a public authority to carry out functions in the public interest. Every charity’s position is different, and the assessment has to be made against its own funding and governance arrangements rather than assumed from the sector it works in. Charities in Scotland need to check their position against Scotland’s own procurement legislation, which does not include an equivalent Dynamic Market vehicle, although eligible devolved Scottish public bodies can access a Dynamic Market established under the Procurement Act 2023 through the cross-border arrangements now in force.

For charities and not-for-profit organisations that do qualify, Dynamic Markets address a specific procurement challenge. Most charities have no dedicated procurement function. Senior or operational staff manage purchasing alongside other responsibilities, and the Procurement Act’s compliance requirements add complexity that already stretched teams struggle to absorb. A Dynamic Market provides a pre-established compliant procurement route where the supplier qualification, the transparency requirements, and the procedural compliance have already been handled. Your team defines the requirement, and Inprova manages the competition process through to award.

The National Procurement Policy Statement requires UK central government departments to set two-year direct spending targets with VCSE organisations by April 2026. This creates both opportunity and obligation for the charity sector, as more public money flows to VCSE delivery partners who in turn need compliant routes to procure the goods, works, and services their programmes require. Dynamic Markets provide that route with proportionate membership conditions that do not disadvantage smaller organisations, and an open supplier base that includes the SMEs and specialist firms that charities often prefer to work with. Contact Inprova’s team today to confirm your eligibility against the contracting authority test and discuss which Dynamic Markets are relevant to your organisation.