The UK government has developed a new e-notification service that will replace the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) and Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) at the end of the Brexit transition period. This system is called ‘Find A Tender Service (FTS)’, and will go live at 23:00 on 31st December 2020.
Contracting Authorities such as the STAR partners, have a legal obligation to publish certain notices in relation to advertising contract opportunities and awards to which the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 apply. For procurement's which are launched after 23:00 on 31st December 2020, these notices will be published on FTS instead of in OJEU.
This change does not affect organisations access to “domestic” portals such as Contracts Finder, MOD, Defence Contracts Online, Public Contacts Scotland, Sell2Wales, or TenderNI. Nor does it affect organisations access to buyer specific portals (such as The Chest). STAR will continue to publish opportunities for our Partners via the Chest.
Organisations wishing to access wider UK public sector contract opportunities where the procurement opportunity is launched after 23:00 on 31st December 2020 will need to access the new FTS.
Suppliers and data consumers who make use of OJEU data outputs will be able to access publicly available data outputs for FTS. Data is available for testing, for support please contact the Crown Commercial Service helpdesk on 0345 410 2222 or on e-mail.
The URL of the new UK e-notification service FTS is: https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk, however, you will not be able to access this URL until the site goes live.
Posted on Wednesday 23rd December 2020