Central Digital Platform (CDP): a complete guide for contracting authorities

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

On 24 February 2025, public procurement in the UK changed. The Procurement Act 2023 came into force, and with it came the Central Digital Platform (CDP) – an enhanced version of Find a Tender that sits at the heart of the new procurement regime.

For contracting authorities, the CDP is now central to how you publish notices, how you collect supplier information, and how you meet your transparency obligations. Understanding what it is, how it works, and – crucially – what it doesn’t do, is essential for any procurement team operating under the new rules.

This guide is written specifically for contracting authorities. It covers everything you need to know about the Central Digital Platform: what it is, what it requires of you, how supplier information flows into your evaluation process, and what good practice looks like once the CDP data is in your hands.

What is the Central Digital Platform?

The Central Digital Platform is the online system established under the Procurement Act 2023. It operates through the enhanced Find a Tender service and serves as the single, central location for all regulated public procurement activity in the UK.

At its core, the CDP does three things:

• It enables contracting authorities and suppliers to register and receive a unique identifier
• It enables contracting authorities to publish procurement notices as required under the Act
• It enables suppliers to submit and store their core organisational information, which they can then share with contracting authorities as part of a bid

The CDP operates via Find a Tender service for new procurements under the Act, taking over the role previously played by Contracts Finder in relation to below-threshold notices. Contracts Finder itself has not been shut down and continues to operate for procurements commenced under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. All regulated procurement notices under the new regime – from pipeline notices through to contract termination notices – must be published on the CDP.

The “Tell Us Once” principle

One of the most significant changes the CDP introduced is the “Tell Us Once” approach to supplier information. Previously, suppliers were required to submit the same organisational information repeatedly across different procurements and buyers. Under the CDP, suppliers input their core information once onto the platform and can share it across multiple procurements.

This information includes business details, financial records, accreditations, and declarations relating to exclusion grounds under Schedules 6 and 7 of the Procurement Act 2023. When a supplier wants to share this information with a contracting authority, they either generate a share code — which can be entered directly into an eSender platform — or download a file of their information to submit as directed.

For contracting authorities, this means you receive a consistent, structured set of supplier information rather than the varying quality of self-assembled SQ responses you may have dealt with before. But receiving that information is just the starting point.

Unique identifiers

Every contracting authority, supplier, procurement, and contract now has a unique identifier on the CDP. For contracting authorities, this is a Public Procurement Organisation Number (PPON), generated when you first register on the platform. This identifier appears in every notice you publish and links together all information associated with your organisation across the platform.

These identifiers matter because they enable tracking and analysis of procurement activity at scale. They also underpin the transparency requirements of the Act, ensuring that procurement data is structured, searchable, and publicly available in the Open Contracting Data Standard.

What contracting authorities must do on the CDP

Registration

Contracting authorities are required to register on the CDP to obtain their unique PPON identifier. If your organisation previously used Find a Tender, you will need to re-register on the enhanced platform. If you register using the same email address as your old account, your saved searches will carry across automatically.

Once registered, you can access ‘My Account’, which shows all organisations for which you are a registered user, and ‘My Notices’, which lists all notices your organisation has published.

Publishing notices

Under the Procurement Act 2023, all regulated procurement notices must be published on the CDP. There are 13 notice types across the procurement and contract management lifecycle. Not every notice is used in every procurement, but the system will guide you through which are required depending on the process type you select.

Three notices are particularly important for contracting authorities to understand:

• Pipeline notices (UK1): mandatory for any contracting authority that considers it will spend more than £100 million on relevant contracts in a financial year. The calculation includes below-threshold contracts and framework call-offs, so more authorities may be in scope than they realise. In-scope authorities must publish a pipeline notice for any intended requirement over £2 million.
• Tender notices (UK4): published to advertise a live opportunity. This notice triggers the formal tendering process and must contain all required information about the procurement, including selection criteria and evaluation methodology.
• Contract award notices: published once tenders have been assessed, informing suppliers of the intention to award. This kicks off the mandatory standstill period before the contract is formally entered into.

Many contracting authorities use an eSender – a third-party platform – to publish notices rather than using Find a Tender directly. If your organisation uses an eSender, you will publish most notices through that system. You are still required to register on Find a Tender itself, but your day-to-day interaction with the CDP may primarily be through your eSender.

Notices must be published on time and contain all required information. Failure to publish a notice when required, or publishing incorrect or incomplete information, can result in non-compliance with the Act and leave your organisation exposed to legal challenge.

Confirming supplier information has been shared

When conducting a covered procurement, contracting authorities are required under Regulation 6 to confirm that the supplier has shared their core supplier information via the CDP. This means checking that the supplier has registered on the platform, submitted their information, and shared it with you – either via a share code or downloaded file – before you proceed.

If a supplier provides updated or corrected information to you before the contract award decision is made, you must obtain further confirmation that the supplier has updated and shared their revised information via the CDP.

It is important to note that if core supplier information is missing from the CDP, you must not request it separately. You should instead ask the supplier to provide it via the platform. The only exception to this is if the CDP is unavailable, in which case contingency arrangements apply under Procurement Regulations 5 and 7.

What the Central Digital Platform does not do

This is where many contracting authorities have run into difficulty, and it’s worth spending time here because the implications are significant.

It does not verify supplier information

The CDP collects and stores supplier information. It does not check, validate, or verify any of it.

The GOV.UK factsheet for the CDP is explicit: it is the supplier’s responsibility to ensure that the data they share is accurate, and the platform does not undertake any assurance before the supplier shares it. It is up to the buying organisation to ensure that the information meets all of their due diligence checks.

In practice, this means:

• A supplier can declare they hold an accreditation they’ve allowed to lapse – the CDP will not flag it
• A supplier’s financial information may be outdated or inaccurate – the CDP will not tell you
• A supplier may have made an incorrect declaration regarding exclusion grounds – the CDP will not catch it

Everything that arrives via a share code or downloaded file is self-certified. The CDP is the delivery mechanism, not the assurance mechanism. Your evaluation process must treat it as such.

It does not replace prequalification

The CDP replaces the Standard Selection Questionnaire as the vehicle for collecting supplier information. This has led some to assume that formal prequalification is no longer required. It is.

Contracting authorities must still conduct their own due diligence to verify supplier eligibility. Standards like the Common Assessment Standard remain relevant. Major framework operators continue to require recognised certification. Prequalification as a concept has not gone away – the paperwork has simply moved to a new platform.

Your conditions of participation, your selection criteria, and your approach to assessing supplier capability all still need to be properly defined and applied. The CDP gives you the data. Assessing what that data means is still your responsibility.

It does not make evaluation decisions

The CDP provides a consistent set of supplier information. It does not assess quality, evaluate technical approach, weigh social value commitments, or produce a ranked outcome. It does not replace the work of an evaluation panel.

Everything that happens from the point of receiving supplier information through to contract award remains a human process, governed by your evaluation methodology and your obligations under the Procurement Act 2023.

It does not produce your procurement record

Section 98 of the Procurement Act 2023 requires contracting authorities to keep records sufficient to explain every material decision made for the purpose of awarding or entering into a public contract. The official guidance is explicit that it is unlikely a notice by itself will be sufficient to discharge this obligation, and contracting authorities must ensure they keep their own records and not rely on the fact that they have published a notice on the CDP.

Those records must be retained for at least three years from the date the contract is awarded. Your audit trail – covering how you assessed supplier information, how you applied your evaluation criteria, and how you reached your award decision – must exist independently of what is held on the platform.

How CDP supplier information fits into your evaluation process

Understanding where CDP data sits within a procurement is important for making sure your process is both compliant and defensible.

Selection versus evaluation: keep them separate

CDP supplier information is primarily relevant to the selection stage of a procurement — assessing whether a supplier is eligible to participate. This is distinct from the evaluation stage, where you assess the quality of their tender.

Selection involves assessing a supplier against your conditions of participation: do they meet the financial thresholds you have set, do they hold the required accreditations, are there grounds for mandatory or discretionary exclusion? This is where CDP data is directly relevant.

Evaluation involves scoring a supplier’s tender response against your award criteria: how strong is their methodology, how do they address your social value requirements, what does their pricing look like? CDP data does not directly feed into this stage.

Conflating the two creates governance risk and makes your decision trail harder to defend if challenged.

Treating share code data as a starting point

When a supplier shares their CDP information with you, treat it as a starting point rather than a completed check. For higher-value or higher-risk contracts, cross-referencing key declarations against independent sources is good practice and may be necessary to discharge your due diligence obligation properly.

This is especially important for contracts where financial stability, specific certifications, or exclusion ground declarations are material to the award decision. A supplier’s self-certified financial information on the CDP, for instance, should be considered alongside independently verified financial data where the contract risk warrants it.

Documenting your assessment

Whatever assessment you make of CDP supplier information needs to be documented. Your evaluation methodology should set out not just what criteria you will apply, but how you will assess the information you receive, who is responsible for that assessment, and how decisions will be recorded.

If you disqualify a supplier at the selection stage – for instance, because their declared information reveals a mandatory exclusion ground – that decision must be recorded and the supplier notified. If you have concerns about the accuracy of information declared on the CDP, your approach to resolving those concerns should also be documented.

The question you should always be able to answer is: if this decision were challenged, could we demonstrate that our assessment was fair, consistent, proportionate, and evidence-based? The CDP cannot answer that question for you. Your records can.

Common mistakes contracting authorities are making

Based on what procurement teams are navigating across the public sector since February 2025, a few patterns of difficulty are emerging.

Assuming the platform has done the work

The most common issue is treating the receipt of a share code as the end of the supplier information process rather than the beginning. Receiving a supplier’s CDP data confirms they have registered and shared their information. It does not confirm that information is accurate, complete, or sufficient for your purposes. The assessment still needs to happen.

Not having a clear methodology for assessing CDP data

Some contracting authorities have invested in understanding how to use the CDP operationally – how to register, how to publish notices, how to receive share codes – without thinking through how CDP data feeds into their broader evaluation methodology. If your evaluation documentation does not address how you will assess supplier information received via the CDP, that is a gap worth closing before your next procurement.

Conflating below-threshold and covered procurements

There is no requirement for contracting authorities to use the CDP to collect supplier information in below-threshold procurement, and publication of supplier identifiers is optional in below-threshold notices. Some teams are applying above-threshold requirements uniformly across all procurements, creating unnecessary administrative burden. Equally, some are assuming CDP flexibility extends to covered procurements where requirements are mandatory.

Under-resourcing the record-keeping obligation

The Section 98 record-keeping obligation is more demanding than many contracting authorities anticipated. The records required go beyond what is published on the CDP. They include records of all communication with suppliers made in relation to a contract award, internal decision records, and documentation of how criteria were applied. Building this into procurement processes from the outset is much easier than trying to reconstruct it retrospectively.

What good practice looks like

Contracting authorities that are navigating the CDP well tend to have a few things in common.

They have a clear, documented evaluation methodology that explicitly addresses how CDP supplier information will be assessed, at what stage, by whom, and how decisions will be recorded. The CDP data does not appear in their process as an afterthought – it has a defined place with defined responsibilities around it.

They treat CDP data as self-certified and apply proportionate verification steps based on the risk profile of the contract. For lower-value procurements, this might mean a light-touch review. For significant contracts, it means cross-referencing declarations against independent sources where it matters most.

They keep selection and evaluation clearly separated in both process and documentation. Supplier information from the CDP informs the selection decision. It does not bleed into the award criteria scoring.

They maintain comprehensive procurement records that can stand independently of the CDP. Their audit trail demonstrates not just what decision was reached but how, and why, with reference to the criteria they applied.

And they have governance arrangements in place to review and sign off on selection decisions before moving to evaluation – ensuring that the people responsible for assessing CDP data have the right authority and that their decisions are subject to appropriate oversight.

FAQs

Need help building a robust evaluation process around the CDP?

The Central Digital Platform has changed how supplier information is collected and shared. But the hard work of evaluation – assessing that information fairly, consistently, and in a way that is defensible – still falls to the contracting authority.

At Commerce Decisions, we work with procurement teams across the public sector to build evaluation processes that are structured, auditable, and fit for purpose under the Procurement Act 2023. Our procurement software, AWARD^®, is fully compliant with the Procurement Act 2023 and integrates directly with the Central Digital Platform. Suppliers can use their CDP share code to import their responses directly into an AWARD^® project, and procurement teams can import the CDP Standard Information template as evidence items to build out their selection questions. That means less manual work, a cleaner audit trail, and a process that holds up to scrutiny.

If you’d like to talk through what this means for your organisation, get in touch with our team.