Public Contracts Regulations 2015 - Regulation 7
Most of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 comes into force today. We will see if public sector and suppliers are ready for the changes introduced. I still think this is too fast a transposition and too short a vacatio legis...
Regulation 7 excludes the application of Part 2 of the Public Contracts Regulations to a number of activities under the Utilities sector which are regulated by Directive 2014/25/EU. The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 do not transpose this Directive, leaving that particular transposition (as well as the one for Directive 2014/23/EU) for the next Parliament. It makes sense then to exclude utilities contracts from the scope of application. However, one should not forget this specific exclusion from Regulation 7 only applies to Part 2 and not the rest of the Public Contracts Regulations.
As mentioned by Albert, Regulation 7 follows a different structure and content from what can be found in Article 7 of Directive 2014/24/EU. This Regulation effectively follows the approach taken in 2006 with the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2006 and one that is different from EU law. This different structure can create some practical problems, but as the scope of Utilities coverage remains mostly unchanged and there were no issues with the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2006, then probably the practical relevance will be small or none.