Tender debrief rights: what a UK public buyer must actually tell you when you lose.

Most unsuccessful bidders accept the template letter and move on. You are usually entitled to more — but which rights you have depends on which of two legal regimes your tender ran under, and the clock is short either way.

First: work out which regime you're under

UK public procurement changed law in February 2025, when the Procurement Act 2023 came into force. But procurements started before that date — and call-offs from frameworks established before it — generally continue under the old Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR 2015). In practice both regimes will run side by side for years. Your award letter usually signals the regime by its vocabulary:

• Talk of an "assessment summary" and a contract award notice → Procurement Act 2023.
• Talk of a "standstill letter", "Alcatel period" or Regulation 86 notice → PCR 2015.

Under the Procurement Act 2023: the assessment summary

Before the buyer can publish its contract award notice, it must give each unsuccessful tenderer an assessment summary. This is the document worth reading closely — it must explain how your tender was assessed against the published award criteria, and give you information about the winning tender's assessment so you can see where you fell short. Government guidance expects it to include the scores and the reasons for them, criterion by criterion — for your bid and the most advantageous one.

A mandatory standstill period of eight working days then runs from the contract award notice before the contract can be signed. That window exists precisely so an aggrieved bidder can raise a challenge while the contract can still be stopped.

Under PCR 2015: the standstill letter and the 15-day debrief

The older regime's award letter (Regulation 86) must state the award criteria, your scores, the winner's scores, the winner's name — and crucially, the characteristics and relative advantages of the successful tender. That last phrase is your lever: a letter that merely lists scores without explaining what the winner did better has not met it, and you can say so in writing.

A ten-day standstill period (when sent electronically) runs before contract signature. Separately, if you were deselected earlier in the process or want more detail, you can request feedback, and the authority must respond within 15 days of the request under Regulation 55.

How to ask so you actually get something

1. Write, don't phone. Email the contact on the award letter within days of receiving it. Phone debriefs produce reassurance; written ones produce records.
2. Ask by the document's own standard. Under the Act: "Please provide the assessment summary including the scores and reasons for each criterion, for our tender and the most advantageous tender." Under PCR: "Please provide the characteristics and relative advantages of the successful tender, per Regulation 86." Quoting the regime's own words signals you know what you're owed.
3. Ask question-level, not total-level. A total score explains nothing. Criterion-by-criterion scores with the evaluators' consensus comments are where the learning is — and under both regimes, reasons are part of what must be given.
4. Ask specifically where you lost the margin. "On question 3, what evidence did the successful tender provide that ours did not?" is hard to answer with boilerplate.

What even a full debrief cannot do

Used well, these rights get you the panel's justifications — genuinely useful for the next bid, and we've written a companion guide on decoding what that feedback really means. But a debrief is a post-mortem. It arrives after the contract is signed, it is written defensively, and it tells you how the panel justified marks against a rubric you had in your hands weeks earlier. The rubric — the criteria, weightings and score definitions in every ITT — is public before you submit, and how panels apply it is standard and predictable. The cheapest debrief is the one you commission on your draft, while every weakness is still fixable.