The impact on lighting of the arrival of the government’s new Procurement Act was debated at the ILP’s Lighting Live – Local Authority event in February, and was one of the highlights of a day of CPD and networking.
As regular readers will undoubtedly recall, Lighting Journal started 2025 by alerting members to the potentially profound changes coming over the horizon, especially for local authority lighting teams, by the government’s new Procurement Act finally coming into force (‘This is going to transform lighting procurement’, January 2025, vol 80 no 1).
We explained how the Act, which came into effect last month after its enaction was delayed from the autumn, is set to move procurement away from ‘MEAT’ or ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender’ to ‘MAT’, ‘Most Advantageous Tender’.
Procurement, effectively, will no longer be an automatic chase down to the lowest price but able, potentially, to consider ‘advantage’ in the context of other less tangible benefits, such as sustainability, or social value, or more creative solutions or technologies, or supporting smaller players in the market and so on.
The good news, however, for street lighting teams, contractors and manufacturers is that, while this potentially profound change is coming, it is clear that – as a panel discussion at February ILP Lighting Live – Local Authority event emphasised – actual, practical change on the ground is unlikely to happen overnight.
It will still, however, remain vital that lighting teams ensure they are up to speed with what is changing and keep communicating with their procurement teams to stay abreast of what is, now, an evolving procurement landscape.
HIGH-LEVEL PANEL
The high-level panel, chaired by ILP Chief Executive Justin Blades, was the end set-piece CPD event for the Lighting Live event held in Daventry, Northamptonshire, on 6 February (and see the panel at the end for more on the day itself).
It brought together Kath Johnson, category manager at YPO – who featured in our article in January – along with Rob Bailey, principal adviser for Association of Public Service Excellence, Michael Hardy, commercial manager at London Councils, and Perry Hazell, both representing the ILP as President and in his ‘day job’ as business manager, Asset Management Services, Environment, Neighbourhoods and Growth, at London Borough of Southwark. With the Act at that time due to be going live in just a matter of days, it was clearly a hugely topical issue to be discussing.
Justin opened the discussion by highlighting how the new Act is introducing increased transparency and competition requirements. ‘How do you think these changes are going to impact local authorities’ ability to use procurement frameworks for street lighting? How do you think they are going to ensure compliance while still securing best value?’ he asked Kath Johnson.
‘For the immediate requirements, any existing contracts will simply continue until the framework or contract expires. We will have business as usual – for now,’ she emphasised.
‘The old requirements will continue for old solutions and the new requirements for the new solutions. Anything that is planned to be established under the new regulations will need to adhere to the new requirements. Best value is one of the principles of the new regulations, with the introduction of MAT to replace MEAT, the “most advantageous tender” considerations,’ she added.
Under the new regulations, notifications will need to be made to the new central digital platform around things such as decision-making and preliminary market engagement, Kath highlighted.
Therefore, all suppliers should ensure they are registered with the platform, she emphasised. ‘It is vitally important that the suppliers are registered so they get all those notifications straightaway. They will then have vision of the pipelines that each of the contracting authorities will be publishing,’ Kath said.
ARE LOCAL AUTHORITIES PREPARED?
Justin turned to Perry to ask how well he felt local authorities were prepared for the arrival of the new Act. ‘And do you think there is any guidance that we should be suggesting at this point?’ he questioned.
‘Are any local authorities well prepared?’ Perry laughed in reply, adding more seriously: ‘I think where this may add some additional challenges is going to be that open, transparency piece; it is going to bring extra scrutiny.
‘In Southwark, for example, we are currently going through an EV procurement piece, so every decision that we make we are going to have to write down the reasons for it. For us, it is going to be “are we competent as local authorities, have we got the additional support, and are we quite happy to be scrutinised in quite an open way at the end of that process?” Would that maybe kick up some additional challenges from our competitors within that process? It could become quite a big admin burden,’ Perry cautioned.
Bringing in Rob Bailey, Justin now focused in on the fact the Act will be about giving more prominence to issues such as sustainability and social value within the procurement process. ‘How do you think authorities are going to be able to respond to this? And balance affordability, social benefit, and environmental impact sustainability when procuring street lighting?’ he asked.
‘The first thing I would say is social value element is not something that is new,’ said Rob. ‘We were using it in the 1990s when competitive tendering was around for in-house services to avoid going head-to-head directly on cost for the services being provided by local authorities. So, we have been doing this for some time.
‘But of course, currently, local authorities are in dire situation financially. So I do think cost will remain key for some time in this current climate. Whilst we like some of the social and environmental stuff, there is going to be an emphasis on cost. I think the Act does give an element of wiggle room,’ he added.
As Perry had alluded to earlier, there was a lot of discussion within the market right now around Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) funding, especially within the context of procurement, Justin highlighted. ‘How can that help to scale up EV charging infrastructure?’ he asked Michael Hardy. ‘The new Act, obviously, introduces changes in procurement procedures. How do you think the local authorities navigate these changes to ensure timely and efficient procurement of these EV charge-points?’
‘Firstly, I don’t think there is an awful lot of difference, to be honest,’ Michael replied. ‘I am in fact surprised at how little difference there is from a procurement point of view.’
For example, the notice period when you can announce something and go ahead with it has gone down from 10 to eight days, he pointed out, and for a standard procurement tender has to be minimum of 30 days. ‘Going forward, it will be something like 25 days. But pragmatically, there is not going to be an awful lot of difference because, if you’re going to try and force it through in 25 days, I don’t think that is enough to get a good response on most procurements,’ he said.
The need for regular reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) could lead to some companies ‘going on the naughty step’, he also highlighted. But there was also a risk this could end up as an expensive field day for the lawyers. ‘It will be interesting to see how they [the government] handle that politically, because there may be some backlash and legal challenges to that,’ he said.
SAFEGUARDING AGAINST DISRUPTION
From here, the discussion opened up into more of a free-flowing debate, including examining how (or even if) local authorities might be able to use the new flexibilities within the Act to safeguard against supply chain disruption, particularly for critical street lighting supplies.
Both Kath Johnson and Perry Hazell emphasised that, at least initially, it will very much be ‘business as usual’ for both sides of the procurement table. ‘I don’t think there will necessarily be a big impact with the change,’ said Perry, by way of example.
‘It will be more around if there are slight adaptations to what we’re asking for. Or if we set out a specification and when we’re actually looking at building that tender and specification, what are we asking for?’ he added.
ROLE OF AI WITHIN TENDERING
Michael Levack, chief of the Highways Electrical Association emphasised the need for more support and advice from central government. Even though Brexit had, notionally, been in part about reducing ‘EU red tape’, the reality was that, almost every year, procurement processes and bureaucracy become ever-more complex. ‘Can you please take a message back [to government] to simplify procurement?’ he asked the panel.
Mark Cooper, technical business development manager at Ubitricity, highlighted how the use of AI is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the writing of tenders, especially tenders for LEVI funding for EV charge-point infrastructure.
‘I think AI is here to stay, for better or for worse,’ said Michael Hardy. ‘The response you get through from AI software, is it much different to what you would get through from people? I don’t think so. But when you are doing the evaluation of a proposal, under the current and the new propositions, you have got to look at what is in front of you, what has actually been put down.’
‘I suspect a lot of people are using AI to write certain parts of those tenders, especially some of the stuff on sustainability and the fluffier end,’ agreed Rob Bailey. ‘Because, if there are five tenders coming in, you’ve got to read every single one and I’m not sure you’re going to spend a lot of time reading the entire sustainability ethos for five different contracts. Because they will be fairly similar potentially.’
As the debate came to a conclusion, Perry Hazell emphasised the importance of lighting teams being involved at an earlier stage in the procurement process, especially for things like adoptable highways. There is also a crying-out need for stronger contract management skills within the lighting industry, he argued.
‘If you haven’t got that on your side, and that early involvement, you’re going to get poor products – unless you’ve got a really good relationship – because ultimately the contractor that is on site wants to put cheap and cheerful in, and doesn’t really care about the longevity of the product as the local authority does,’ Perry said.
You’ve got to be early on specification and then also have that operational management,’ he added.
LIGHTING LIVE – LOCAL AUTHORITY
February’s Lighting Live – Local Authority in Daventry brought together ILP members along with exhibitors showcasing products and innovation.
The event, returning to Daventry for its third year, had four event partners: Urbis Schréder, Stainton Lighting Design Services, CU Phosco, and Charles Endirect, all of whom presented a ‘partner pitch’ during the day.
As well as the final procurement panel discussion, the day saw a number of highly informative CPD papers being presented.
There were two papers on PFI expiry, with Neil Sennett from Amey and Katie Moreton from Walsall Council discussing how the process was working for them. George Bailey of Kiwa CMT (Construction Materials Testing) then examined the importance of data collection and testing services ahead of the PFI hand-back process.
WSP’s Allan Howard and Chris Bolt from Arup examined the intricacies – and controversies – of the new Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) and Manual of Contract Documents for Highway Works (MCHW) for road lighting requirements. This led to much discussion in the hall.
Karl Rourke of East Riding of Yorkshire Council presented an update on his pioneering pilot project with Live Labs around decarbonising street lighting.
London Borough of Islington’s Arslan Majid and Leanna Dinnegan also considered the value of peer review, and how this has helped them to accelerate, and forefront, a more inclusive design approach to public spaces.
Many of these papers will be followed up on within Lighting Journal within the coming months. So, watch this space!
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the March edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
