The Procurement Act 2023 has its first legal judgment, and it is a significant one. On 1 May 2026, the Technology and Construction Court handed down its ruling in Parkingeye Limited v Velindre University NHS Trust, and the message is clear: the rules have genuinely changed. The court itself described the new test as "substantively and not merely formally very different, in both its method and its effect, from the former test."
Whether you are a supplier bidding for public contracts or a contracting authority running a procurement, this judgment has direct implications for how challenges play out, and what you should be doing differently right now.
Background: What Was the Case About?
Parkingeye Limited was the incumbent provider of car park management services for Velindre University NHS Trust. When the Trust ran a re-procurement under the Procurement Act 2023, Parkingeye's bid was unsuccessful. The company issued legal proceedings during the statutory standstill period, challenging the outcome on a wide range of grounds. These included alleged errors in the tender notice, lack of transparency in evaluation, unequal treatment of bidders, and concerns about deficient record-keeping by evaluators.
By issuing those proceedings during the standstill period, Parkingeye triggered an automatic suspension under section 101(1) of the Act, which prevented the Trust from entering into the contract with the winning bidder. The Trust applied to the court to have that suspension lifted. The court refused. The suspension held, and the reasons why it held are what matter most.
The Old Test vs the New Test
Under the previous regime, applications to lift an automatic suspension were decided using the American Cyanamid principles. This is a framework developed by the House of Lords in 1975 for interim injunctions generally. That test followed a staged approach. The court first asked whether there was a serious issue to be tried. If yes, it then asked whether damages would be an adequate remedy for the claimant. In the vast majority of procurement cases, the court found that damages would indeed be adequate, and that finding was effectively decisive. The suspension was lifted, the contract was signed, and the unsuccessful bidder was left to pursue financial compensation rather than the contract itself.
The result, in practice, was that automatic suspensions were lifted far more often than not.
The Procurement Act 2023 replaces that framework with a bespoke test set out in section 102(2) of the Act. The court must now have regard to three things:
- The public interest, including the principle that public contracts should be awarded in accordance with the law and the need to avoid delay in supply
- The interests of suppliers, including whether damages would be an adequate remedy
- Any other matters the court considers appropriate
The ordering is not accidental. Public interest comes first, and, crucially, it must be considered in every case. It is no longer possible for a contracting authority to succeed simply by showing that the claimant could be compensated financially.
What the Court Actually Decided
HHJ Keyser KC found that the public interest, properly understood, generally favours keeping a suspension in place rather than lifting it. The court's reasoning centred on one of the core principles running through the Act: that public contracts should be awarded lawfully, and that where the lawfulness of an award is in dispute, the contract should not be concluded until that dispute is resolved.
On the adequacy of damages, the judge acknowledged that financial compensation would likely have been available to Parkingeye. Under the old regime, that would almost certainly have been the end of the matter. Under the new test, the court found it was simply one factor among several, and it was not enough to outweigh the public interest in keeping the suspension in place.
The full judgment is available on the National Archives caselaw portal for those who want to read the court's reasoning in full.
It is worth noting that the defendants applied for permission to appeal, so this may not be the final word. Even so, this judgment represents the court's clearest statement yet of how the new regime is intended to operate. Practitioners on all sides will be taking note.
What This Means in Practice
The implications fall into two broad categories: what it means for suppliers considering a challenge, and what it means for contracting authorities running procurements.
For suppliers
The landscape has shifted meaningfully in suppliers’ favour. Under the old rules, triggering an automatic suspension was often a strategic step with limited practical effect. The suspension would typically be lifted before trial, and you would be left pursuing damages. Now, the suspension is harder to lift. If you issue a well-founded challenge during the standstill period, there is a much stronger prospect that the suspension will hold, giving you a realistic chance of having the award decision set aside and the procurement reconsidered before the contract is signed.
That said, the court made clear that every case will turn on its own facts. The public interest is not a fixed weight; it will be assessed differently depending on the nature of the contract, the urgency of supply, and the specific circumstances of the procurement. Compelling evidence, properly presented, matters more now than it ever did.
For contracting authorities
This judgment is a prompt to contracting authorities to get procurement processes right at every stage. The days of relying on a damages argument to see off a suspension are over. Authorities that face a challenge will need to demonstrate why, in the specific circumstances of their procurement, the public interest favours lifting the suspension rather than maintaining it. That requires cogent evidence about the consequences of delay, not just an assertion that the contract needs to be signed. Our procurement consultancy services are designed to help organisations run defensible, compliant processes from the outset, reducing the risk of challenge before it arises.
The Broader Significance
Beyond the immediate outcome, this case tells us something important about how the courts will approach the Procurement Act 2023 more generally.
The judgment makes clear that the Act is to be read and applied as its own piece of legislation, not as a continuation of the EU-derived framework it replaced. The court looked to the Act's objectives, its drafting, and its explanatory materials to reach its conclusions. Previous case law under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 was referenced only to note how far the new regime departs from it.
This matters for anyone who assumed the new Act would simply replicate the old one in a tidier format. It will not, and the courts are saying so plainly. Organisations that have been operating on that assumption need to update their thinking, and their processes.
The Act also rewards transparency and rigour in the procurement process itself. Several of Parkingeye's grounds of challenge related to how the evaluation was conducted and recorded. Evaluation records that do not provide a clear, traceable basis for the scores awarded are a vulnerability, both in challenge proceedings and in wider scrutiny. Good record-keeping is not a bureaucratic burden; it is protection.
How We Can Help
Whether you are a supplier navigating your options after an unsuccessful bid, or a procurement team looking to strengthen your processes under the new regime, the Parkingeye judgment reinforces one thing above all else: understanding the rules, and following them rigorously, has never mattered more.
At Thornton & Lowe, we offer outsourced procurement consultancy, supporting contracting authorities and publicly funded organisations to run compliant, defensible processes. For suppliers, our bid writing and management services help you put your best case forward at every stage, and our bid writing training equips in-house teams with the skills to do the same.
If you would like to talk through what this judgment means for your organisation, get in touch with Thornton & Lowe today.
