Conditions of participation and the PSQ: passing the selection stage

Published 29/10/2026. General information, not legal advice: always check the official notice and guidance.

Before a buyer scores your price and method statement, it checks whether your business can deliver the contract at all. Under the Procurement Act 2023, which has applied to new procurements since 24/02/2025, that check is made through conditions of participation. They replace the selection criteria in Part 3 of the old Standard Selection Questionnaire, and in many tenders they arrive in a document called the procurement specific questionnaire (PSQ). Failing one condition can end your bid, however good the rest of it is.

What a condition of participation is

Section 22 of the Act defines a condition of participation as "a condition that a supplier must satisfy if the supplier is to be awarded the public contract". A buyer may only set conditions that are a proportionate way of making sure suppliers have:

• the legal and financial capacity to perform the contract, or
• the technical ability to perform it.

Proportionate means having regard to the nature, complexity and cost of the contract, so a one-off supply of a few appliances should not carry the same hurdles as a multi-year estate maintenance contract.

GOV.UK guidance draws a clear line: award criteria assess the tender, while conditions of participation assess the supplier. They must be marked separately, and once you pass the conditions your tender is scored on the award criteria alone. The conditions must be set out in the tender notice, with more detail in the tender documents where needed.

Rules that protect smaller suppliers

The Act limits what buyers can ask for, which matters to small dealers, installers and service firms:

1. Audited accounts. A buyer cannot demand audited annual accounts unless you are already required to have them audited under Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006 (or an overseas equivalent). If you are not, it must look at other evidence of financial capacity.
2. Insurance. A buyer cannot require contract-related insurance to be in place before award. It can ask you to commit to holding the required cover from the start of the contract, backed by evidence such as a broker's letter. Insurance you must hold by law anyway, such as employers' liability, can still be required.
3. Experience. Buyers can ask for relevant experience, including public-sector experience, but not for a past contract with one particular authority.
4. Qualifications. Where a buyer names a qualification or standard, it must accept equivalents.

The guidance also says buyers may let a supplier progress while it is still obtaining a standard, as long as it is met before award.

The PSQ and the Central Digital Platform

The Act does not prescribe a form, but the Civil Service Procurement Pathway publishes a template PSQ. It gathers your core supplier information from the Central Digital Platform, plus extra exclusion and debarment questions and the evidence for each condition of participation.

Buyers must get confirmation that you have submitted up-to-date core supplier information on the platform and shared it with them. That information covers basic details such as your name and address, exclusion grounds, economic and financial standing, and connected persons. Anything else the conditions need comes through the buyer's own e-tendering system. Our guide to what the Procurement Act 2023 changes explains how to register.

Exclusion grounds

Separately from the conditions, a buyer must check whether you are an "excluded" or "excludable" supplier under section 57. Mandatory grounds in Schedule 6 include offences such as fraud, bribery, tax offences and labour market, slavery and trafficking offences. Discretionary grounds in Schedule 7 include insolvency, professional misconduct, environmental misconduct, and breach of contract and poor performance. In each case the buyer considers whether the circumstances are continuing or likely to happen again, so keep a short note of any past issue and what you have changed since.

Relying on partners and subcontractors

You do not have to meet every condition on your own. Under section 22(8) and (9) you can rely on another supplier if you bid together as a consortium, or if the buyer is satisfied you will have a legally binding arrangement for that supplier to subcontract part of the work or guarantee your performance. Suppliers you rely on (other than guarantors) are named in the contract award notice.

Frameworks work the same way. A framework can set its own conditions, and buyers running a call-off competition may add proportionate extra conditions, such as specific insurance levels, if the framework allows it. See how frameworks work.

What our data shows

Conditions of participation usually sit in the tender documents rather than the notice summary. Of the 331 notices in the KitchenTenders dataset on 29/10/2026, only 2 mention the PSQ by name in the notice text, and 2 mention Gas Safe registration. So download the full documents from the buyer's portal before deciding to bid.

A practical checklist

1. Keep your Central Digital Platform record up to date, and re-share it for each tender.
2. Hold a ready file: last two years' accounts or management accounts, insurance schedules, Gas Safe, F-Gas and other trade registrations, and three recent contract examples.
3. Read the conditions before the specification. If you cannot meet one, decide early whether a partner or subcontractor could.
4. Get broker letters for any higher insurance levels before the deadline.

Browse upcoming tenders to plan ahead.

Sources

1. legislation.gov.uk: Procurement Act 2023, section 22 (conditions of participation)
2. GOV.UK: Guidance: Conditions of Participation
3. GOV.UK: Procurement Act 2023 e-learning, Module 6: supplier selection
4. Procurement Pathway (Civil Service): PA 2023 procurement specific questionnaire
5. legislation.gov.uk: Procurement Act 2023, section 57 (excluded and excludable suppliers)
6. legislation.gov.uk: Procurement Act 2023, Schedule 6 (mandatory exclusion grounds)
7. legislation.gov.uk: Procurement Act 2023, Schedule 7 (discretionary exclusion grounds)