Court rules on the flexibility that public authorities are required to give to bidders who do not comply with the rules

Under UK and EU procurement rules, if a bidder a submits a tender that doesn’t fully comply with the awarding authority’s bid instructions, does the awarding authority have any discretion to admit that flawed tender? A recent decision by the High Court in England indicates that an authority does have such discretion, although it is not a discretion that the contracting authority is required to exercise, particularly where the cause of the non-compliance lies with the bidder. Authorities are within their rights to use even minor instances of technical non-compliance by bidders to reject otherwise valid tenders.

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