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Tender award and debriefing

As of January 2006 all procurements subject to EU directives must include a Standstill Period referred to as the 'Alcatel Judgement'. This is a period of at least 10 calendar days between informing all interested suppliers of the tender award decision and the signing of contracts This gives unsuccessful tenderers a reasonable opportunity to object to the award decision. We recognise this as best practice and as such are likely to adopt this approach for all our tender awards.

Suppliers who are unsuccessful in being invited to tender (not shortlisted) should be given the:

• cut off score for invitation to tender
• score they achieved
• opportunity to request more in depth feedback

When making the tender award decision, a letter should be sent to all tenderers a minimum of at least 10 days before contracts being signed. The letter of notification should contain:

• the award criteria
• where appropriate, the tenderer's score
• where appropriate, the winning tenderer's score
• the name of the winning tenderer