What Is the Procurement Specific Questionnaire (PSQ)?

Under the old rules, most public tenders began with the same ritual: the Standard Selection Questionnaire. Company name, registration number, directors, accounts, exclusion declarations, insurance, experience. Then, for the next tender, all of it again.

For procurements run under the Procurement Act 2023, its place has been taken by the Procurement Specific Questionnaire, or PSQ. The government's own template says it “will fulfil a similar role to the Standard Selection Questionnaire”, and helps buyers receive “core supplier information (from the central digital platform), additional exclusions and debarment information, and information relating to conditions of participation”.

That one sentence contains the important change. Much of what you used to type into the questionnaire now lives somewhere else. The PSQ is the part that is specific to this procurement, as the name suggests.

Most of the answers live somewhere else#

The Procurement Regulations 2024 define a set of core supplier information that every supplier keeps on the central digital platform. It has four parts:

• basic information — name, identifiers, addresses, legal form and similar;
• economic and financial standing information — essentially your accounts;
• connected person information — for example, people with significant control;
• exclusion grounds information — self-declarations about the convictions and events that can exclude a supplier.

For each procurement, you register on the platform, submit up-to-date core supplier information, and share it with the buyer through the platform. The platform is Find a Tender. The PSQ template notes that it is free to use, and that suppliers “should no longer have to re-enter this information for each public procurement but simply ensure it is up to date and subsequently shared”.

Two details in the regulations are easy to miss:

1. There is a deadline. In an open or competitive flexible procedure, the buyer must obtain your confirmation that you have registered, submitted and shared your core supplier information before the end of the tendering period. Treat it like any other procedural requirement: something that can knock out a perfectly good bid if it is left until the last afternoon.
2. Changes need re-sharing. If your core supplier information changes after you have shared it and before the contract is awarded, the updated version must go onto the platform and be shared again.

The financial part also deals neatly with an old worry. The regulations ask for audited accounts only where your company was required to have them audited. Otherwise, you provide accounts or other equivalent information, “so far as those accounts or that other information can reasonably be given”. That is the same principle behind the audited-accounts rule.

What the PSQ itself asks#

The current government template (version 2.0) is in three parts.

Buyers can tailor Part 3A, so two PSQs for two different contracts can look quite different in that section. Part 3B applies to central government departments, their agencies and non-departmental public bodies, and the template says it should not be edited by them except where a condition would not be proportionate or policy allows. For example, contracts above £5 million a year carry questions about how promptly you pay your own supply chain.

The parts that catch people out#

Associated persons#

An associated person is a company you rely on to satisfy the conditions of participation: a parent whose accounts carry your financial standing, say, or a partner whose experience you are using.

Relying on someone brings them into the exclusion regime. Their basic, connected-person and exclusion information has to be shared via the platform too. If the associated person turns out to be excluded or excludable, the Act requires the buyer to tell you and give you a reasonable opportunity to replace them before disregarding your tender. That is a reprieve, but not one to plan around. Ask your associated persons to register early.

Intended sub-contractors#

The Act requires buyers to ask whether you intend to sub-contract and to check whether any intended sub-contractor is on the debarment list. If you intend to sub-contract to an excluded supplier, the buyer must treat you as excluded. Before disregarding your tender, it must tell you and give you a reasonable opportunity to find another sub-contractor.

So Part 2B is not an administrative list to complete at the end. Finding a replacement sub-contractor mid-procurement is possible, but rarely comfortable. It is worth knowing who your sub-contractors will be before you decide to bid.

Part 3 is where eligibility is decided#

Part 3 holds the conditions of participation: the questions that decide whether you can take part at all. The template's own guidance repeats the two protections that matter most to smaller suppliers:

• buyers must not require audited accounts from suppliers that are not required to have them audited;
• buyers must not require contract insurance to be in place before award, though they may ask for evidence or commitments that you will be able to obtain it on award.

Works contracts are slightly different. The template says they should continue to use the questions in the construction industry's Common Assessment Standard, while still asking the Part 2 questions.

Before the first PSQ arrives#

Most PSQ trouble comes from doing everything at once, under a deadline. Most of it can be done in advance:

1. Register on the platform and submit your core supplier information now, not when a tender lands.
2. Keep it current. A change of director, address or accounts means updating and, during a live procurement, re-sharing.
3. Have your financial information ready — audited accounts if your company needs them, otherwise accounts or equivalent information.
4. Know who you would rely on, and make sure any associated person has registered and shared their information too.
5. Know who you would sub-contract to, and check they are not excluded.
6. Read Part 3 against your evidence as soon as the tender is published, alongside everything else the pack requires.
7. Note the end of the tendering period as the deadline for the platform confirmation, not just for the tender itself.

The PSQ looks like the old questionnaire with a new name. In practice the work has moved: less form-filling for each tender, more upkeep in between. Suppliers who keep their platform record current will find most PSQs short. Those who leave it until a tender arrives will find the PSQ is the easy part, and everything it depends on is not.