Procurements run electronically seem to produce proportionately more claims of unfairness than the off-line variety. The cases that we summarise in this issue of our UK Public Procurement Law Digest all stem from on-line procurements run by the same contracting body in which accusations of unfairness arose. The Courts followed a clear prior line of cases to say that an authority owes no duty to make an exception where the supposed unfairness arose due to the bidder’s own error – but it can be a different story where the authority itself set out ground rules regarding evaluation that discriminate against certain bidders.

If there were an award for “Services to Procurement Law”, the UK’s Legal Services Commission (“LSC”) would be worthy, if unfortunate, winners. The LSC runs the legal aid scheme in England and Wales. Largely through no fault of the LSC itself, some of its recent procurement exercises have produced a series of helpful cases which illustrate points of principle under the UK procurement regulations. We summarise the outcome of a number of these cases in this edition of the UK Public Procurement Law Digest.