Pass/fail questions in tenders: the conditions to check before you bid

Under the Procurement Act 2023, pass/fail tests on capability are called conditions of participation. The government’s guidance says they may relate only to a supplier’s legal and financial capacity, or its technical ability to perform the contract, and must be a proportionate way of checking that. It also sets some firm limits:

• A buyer cannot require audited accounts from a supplier that is not already obliged to have them audited. It must assess financial capacity with other evidence.
• A buyer cannot require contract-related insurance to be held before award. It can require the supplier to hold it from the start of the contract.
• A buyer cannot require a previous contract with that particular authority, although it can ask for public-sector experience.
• A named qualification must allow for equivalents.

These rules apply to procurements started on or after 24 February 2025. Older procurements still run under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, so check which regime the notice names.

Separately from capability, every supplier is checked against exclusion grounds: mandatory grounds, where the supplier must be excluded, and discretionary grounds, where it may be. The lookback is five years. Connected persons, such as directors and parent companies, and sub-contractors you rely on are checked too, and buyers must check the government’s debarment list. A supplier can show that it has dealt with a past problem, which the rules call self-cleaning.

Much of this now sits in your record on the Central Digital Platform, the enhanced Find a Tender service. You register, complete your supplier information, and share it with each buyer using a share code, which you enter in the buyer’s tendering portal. Buyers must confirm that you have registered and shared your information before the tendering period ends, so a missing registration is itself a gate. Our Central Digital Platform guide walks through it.

For below-threshold contracts, there is some good news: a buyer cannot add a pre-qualification stage to cut down the number of suppliers invited to tender, though it can check suitability at the award stage. The exception is a works contract above a set value, which may have a separate suitability stage.

In the sample memo we wrote on Qualifications Wales’s facilities management tender, for a fictional 38-person maintenance firm, twelve gates, must-haves and checks went into one table. Some of the gates in that tender:

• Insurance: employer’s liability £5m, public liability £10m, professional indemnity £1m, held or committed before award.
• Financial standing: no turnover threshold; two years’ accounts tested on ratios after scoring, starting with the top-ranked bidder.
• Cyber security: Cyber Essentials or ISO 27001 as a minimum.
• Carbon Reduction Plan: published to the Welsh standard no more than twelve months before the procurement started, even on a contract of this size.
• Health and safety: a signed policy reviewed in the last two years, a competent person, and no enforcement orders in three years.
• Real Living Wage for everyone working on the contract.

The fictional firm met seven, had two to act on and three to check. Its one hard gap, public liability cover of £5m against £10m, could be closed with a broker’s letter committing to the higher cover before award. That became a condition of bidding, with a date.

1. List every pass/fail item from the selection questionnaire, the specification and the contract terms, with the document and section it comes from.
2. Give each a status: meets, action needed, or check. “Probably fine” is not a status.
3. For each action, name an owner and a date before the tender deadline, with time to spare.
4. Decide. If any gate cannot be met by the deadline, the answer is no bid, however attractive the contract.
5. Ask about anything unclear through the clarification process. If a condition looks disproportionate, or conflicts with the guidance above, say so politely in writing before the deadline.

Many buyers now ask these questions through the Procurement Specific Questionnaire. Our PSQ guide lists what it covers and what to have ready.

Gates are the cheapest part of a tender to check and the most expensive to get wrong. A short table, filled in before anyone drafts, either clears the way for the writing or saves the team from a bid it could never have won.

1. Procurement Act 2023 guidance: Conditions of Participation (paras 1, 2, 11, 13, 16–20), updated 17 August 2026. www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents-procure-phase/guidance-conditions-of-participation-html
2. Procurement Act 2023 guidance: Exclusions (paras 12, 27–29, 41–52, 53–66, 70), updated 17 August 2026. www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents-procure-phase/guidance-exclusions-html
3. Procurement Act 2023 guidance: Central Digital Platform and Publication of Information (paras 59–66), updated 17 August 2026. www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents-procure-phase/guidance-central-digital-platform-and-publication-of-information-html
4. Suppliers: detailed walkthrough – how an administrator completes and updates supplier information (share codes), updated 21 October 2026. www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-short-guides/suppliers-detailed-walkthrough-how-an-administrator-completes-and-updates-supplier-information-html
5. Procurement Act 2023 guidance: Below-Threshold Contracts (paras 8, 16–19), updated 13 July 2026. www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-act-2023-guidance-documents-define-phase/guidance-below-threshold-contracts-html
6. Qualifications Wales, ref. QWL262702: Response Template 1 (Q17, Q24–29, Q33, Q49), ITT 5.8, 5.10 and Terms 14.5, published on Sell2Wales. www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/099768-2026

Read on 23 and 24 October 2026. Guidance and tender documents change; check the current version before relying on any detail. Examples that use a fictional supplier say so.