At Mills and Reeve we are always interested in seeing if we can do things in new ways. Regulation 84 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 requires contracting authorities to keep a comprehensive report, rather like a bible of documents, about the progress of the procurement and the reasons for the decisions taken during it.
“Please send us your Regulation 84 report!” is often the first request that solicitors for a potential challenger will make of a contracting authority, so it is important to be properly prepared.
Speaking to clients and contacts we realised that there was uncertainty about when the report should be complied and what it ought to contain in order to be compliant. With that in mind we made available on our procurement portal our regulation 84 report template.
More recently we’ve been delighted to collaborate with Lifecycle (the procurement and contract management experts) to create an online regulation 84 report tool. This is completely free to access (following a very short registration process) and is available at www.regulation84.co.uk. The online site guides you through all the details you need to include in order to create a compliant report, and allows you to upload files to the report (the relevant procurement documents for example). This can then be securely downloaded to your systems.
If you give it a try, we would be really interested to hear what you thought of it; please email [email protected]