Public bodies across the North will work to new procurement thresholds from 1 January 2026 after ministers signed off changes to the Procurement Act 2023 this week. The statutory instrument (S.I. 2025/1200) was made on 18 November and laid before Parliament on 21 November, according to legislation.gov.uk. For finance and procurement teams in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and the North East, the update lands just as budgets are being finalised for the new year.

Two headline figures shift for regulated below‑threshold works. The section 85(3)(a) amount moves from £138,760 to £135,018. The section 85(3)(b) amount moves from £213,477 to £207,720. These tweaks are modest in cash terms but important for process choice and audit trails, particularly where minor highways, estates repairs or small civils schemes sit close to the cut‑off.

Beyond those works figures, most of Schedule 1’s threshold amounts are also adjusted so the UK remains aligned with the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement. The Cabinet Office notes that rows 4, 6 and 9–12 of Schedule 1 derive directly from GPA limits, while rows 1–3 are brought into line for consistency even though they are not GPA‑set.

There is a clear Welsh divergence. The instrument creates a dedicated Welsh column in Schedule 1 and a separate column for all other cases, but the amended amounts in this UK instrument do not apply to contracts regulated by the Welsh Ministers. Welsh Ministers will make a separate order with their own figures for devolved Welsh authorities. Until that is in place, Welsh‑regulated contracts continue on existing numbers.

Northern Ireland is expressly in scope for the UK‑wide column, and the Department of Finance for Northern Ireland has given its consent under section 113(4) of the Procurement Act 2023. That matters for councils and arm’s‑length bodies using cross‑border frameworks where awards or call‑offs may be run in England and Northern Ireland under one commercial strategy.

Transitional rules are straightforward. Procurements that have already started before 1 January 2026 stay under the current thresholds. A procurement counts as started if, before that date, a tender notice (section 21), a transparency notice (section 44) or a below‑threshold tender notice (section 87) has been published, tenders have been invited for a regulated below‑threshold contract, or a supplier has been contacted to begin awarding a below‑threshold contract.

In practical terms for Northern councils, the job now is to update standing orders, workflow templates and e‑tendering settings so the new figures are live from New Year’s Day. Pipeline reviews should look again at estates, housing maintenance and highways packages hovering around the £135k and £207k marks to ensure the correct route, documentation set and advertising are used.

For local suppliers and SMEs-especially construction, civils and building services-this tidies the playing field. Works around the revised amounts may see a different process applied from January. Keep an eye on below‑threshold tender notices, and check how buyers are sequencing market engagement and award once the new limits bite.

This order also fixes a technical oversight from an earlier update (S.I. 2025/163), where Schedule 1 moved but section 85(3) did not. The Government has now aligned section 85(3) with rows 11 and 12 of Schedule 1 as originally intended, reducing the risk of conflicting readings between statute text and the Schedule table.

No full impact assessment accompanies the change, with ministers indicating no significant effect on the private or voluntary sectors. Even so, finance directors and heads of procurement across the North would be wise to brief service leads before the Christmas break and watch for Wales’s separate instrument so cross‑border projects don’t stumble on differing thresholds in early 2026.