A Cabinet Office rule tells every Whitehall department to publish, by 30 September each year, how much it spends with small businesses, collated in one place. That place has not been updated since August 2023, and three deadlines have since come and gone.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. Procurement Policy Note 001, published 13 February 2025, tells departments to publish their annual progress on direct spend with small and medium-sized enterprises "no later than... 30 September" each year [2], and names the fallback mechanism while a promised digital platform is built: results "sent to the Cabinet Office who will collate and publish centrally" [2]. The GOV.UK collection built for that job, "Central government spend with SMEs," was last updated 15 August 2023 and its newest edition covers the 2021 to 2022 financial year [3]. Three 30 September deadlines, 2023, 2024 and 2025, have passed since PPN-001 wrote the rule down. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
Every year, government departments buy goods and services worth tens of billions of pounds, and a share of that money is meant to reach small and medium-sized enterprises rather than the largest suppliers alone. Procurement Policy Note 001, the Cabinet Office's current rule on the subject and one of a running series of such notes [8], published 13 February 2025 alongside the National Procurement Policy Statement, tells departments exactly how to prove it: set a target, and publish the results [1].
The rule, with a date attached
PPN-001 is specific in a way this site does not often find in government guidance. In-scope organisations "should set a three year target for direct spend with SMEs and a two year target for direct spend with VCSEs, to be achieved in the financial year ending March 2028, and publish results annually" [1] (paragraph 8). Targets needed ministerial sign-off, with the department's minister writing to the Cabinet Office's Parliamentary Secretary "by 31 May 2025" [1] (paragraph 10). And publication of the results themselves carries its own date: "no later than 30 September annually for the previous financial year period" [1] (paragraph 11). The accompanying guidance repeats the deadline and adds where the numbers are meant to end up: "the intention is for all targets for direct spend with SMEs and the annual publication of direct spend with SMEs to be published on the Central Digital Platform for ease of comparison. Whilst this functionality is being developed, all targets for direct spend with SMEs should be sent to the Cabinet Office who will collate and publish centrally" [2]. No Central Digital Platform for this data appears anywhere on GOV.UK; the fallback, Cabinet Office doing it centrally, is therefore the only mechanism actually in operation.
Where the results were supposed to land
That fallback has a name and a long history. "Central government spend with SMEs" is a GOV.UK collection the Cabinet Office has run since 2 May 2019, gathering one dataset per financial year stretching back to 2013 to 2014 [3]. Its own page states plainly when it was last touched: "Last updated: 15 August 2023" [3]. The most recent dataset it links to is "Central government spend with SMEs 2021 to 2022," published that same day [4]. A direct GOV.UK search for later editions, 2022 to 2023, 2023 to 2024, or 2024 to 2025, filtered to the Cabinet Office, returns nothing past that August 2023 entry [5]. PPN-001 was written and dated seventeen months after that collection's last update, naming this exact page as the interim home for the very data it demands, and the page has not moved since.
What that means against the calendar PPN-001 sets
Financial years ending 31 March 2023, 2024 and 2025 each carried their own 30 September publication deadline under PPN-001's own words, falling in September 2023, September 2024 and September 2025 [1]. All three have now passed. None produced a new central edition. Individual departments have not obviously filled the gap either: direct searches for the kind of results publication PPN-001 describes, checked against several of the largest departments by spend, Ministry of Defence, HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Transport and the Home Office, turn up only forward-looking "SME action plans" published across March and July 2026, documents about future barrier-removal commitments, not the annual spend-against-target figures the rule requires [6] [7] [9] [10]. A rule with a specific date attached is, on the evidence GOV.UK itself carries, not being met by the mechanism built to meet it.
The claims, tested
| PPN-001's own words | What the evidence actually shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Departments "should... publish results annually," with publication "no later than 30 September annually for the previous financial year period" [1] | Three 30 September deadlines, 2023, 2024 and 2025, have passed since PPN-001 was published in February 2025 | Deadline written down, not met since |
| "Whilst this functionality is being developed, all targets for direct spend with SMEs should be sent to the Cabinet Office who will collate and publish centrally" [2] | The named collection, "Central government spend with SMEs," was last updated 15 August 2023, seventeen months before PPN-001 named it [3] | The interim mechanism has not produced a single edition since the rule pointed to it |
| Executive agencies and NDPBs with procurement spend over £100 million a year must have their direct SME spend "published by the parent department separately for transparency" [1] | No department-level results publication was found in direct searches of four major departments; only forward-looking action plans from 2026 [6] [7] [9] [10] | No visible substitute for the missing central collation |
The mistakes, counted
The named central mechanism has not published since before the rule existed (1). PPN-001's guidance is explicit that, until a Central Digital Platform exists, "all targets for direct spend with SMEs should be sent to the Cabinet Office who will collate and publish centrally" [2]. The collection this points to, "Central government spend with SMEs," records its own last update as 15 August 2023 [3], predating PPN-001 itself by seventeen months. No Central Digital Platform carrying this data appears anywhere on GOV.UK either, leaving the named mechanism as the only one in operation, and it has not moved.
Three annual deadlines have now passed with nothing published (2). PPN-001 sets publication "no later than 30 September annually for the previous financial year period" [1], a deadline that fell in September 2023, September 2024 and September 2025 for the three financial years since the central collection's last edition. None produced a new dataset in the collection PPN-001 itself names, and direct department-level searches for the actual results publication, as opposed to forward-looking SME action plans, found none among four of the largest departments checked [6] [7] [9] [10].
Credit where due
The policy framework around this rule is not empty. The Procurement Act 2023, which PPN-001 cites as its backdrop, brought in genuine structural changes for small suppliers: a duty on contracting authorities to consider removing barriers to entry, greater advance visibility of upcoming contracts, a bar on requiring performance-related insurance before award, and 30-day payment terms running through the whole public sector supply chain [1]. Several departments, including the Ministry of Defence, HMRC, the Department for Transport and the Home Office, did publish fresh SME action plans in 2026 setting out concrete steps to open up their supply chains [6] [7] [9] [10]. And when the central collection was being kept up, from 2013 through 2022, it worked broadly as designed, one dataset most years, each showing the government's own account of what share of its spending reached smaller suppliers. The commitment behind PPN-001 is not hollow. The specific promise to publish the score, on the date the rule itself sets, is the part that has gone quiet.
Verdict
Four stars, from two documented mistakes. PPN-001 is an unusually precise document by the standard of the rulebooks this site has tested: a named target, a named deadline, a named place to check. That precision is exactly what makes the gap easy to see rather than easy to argue about. The place PPN-001 names has not published since before PPN-001 existed, and three of the deadlines it sets in writing have now passed without a result. A department can still be spending well with small businesses and simply not be telling anyone; this piece does not test the underlying spend, only the promise to show it. On the evidence GOV.UK itself carries, that promise is the one part of a genuinely reformist procurement rule that nobody has yet kept.
The star score counts two documented mistakes: the central collation mechanism PPN-001 itself names, unchanged since 15 August 2023, seventeen months before the rule was written; and three consecutive 30 September publication deadlines (2023, 2024, 2025) that have passed with no new central edition and no department-level substitute found in direct searches of four major departments. Two falls in the 1 to 3 band: four stars; the bands are on the ratings page. Analysis is of Procurement Policy Note 001 and its guidance as served from GOV.UK, and the "Central government spend with SMEs" collection, both checked 21 September 2026. The document is tracked in the Daily Register; a revision will get a diff entry.
Sources
- Procurement Policy Note 001 - SME and VCSE procurement spend targets (HTML), GOV.UK, Cabinet Office, published 13 February 2025
- Procurement Policy Note 001 - Guidance on how to set SME spend targets and annual publication of results (HTML), GOV.UK, Cabinet Office, published 13 February 2025
- Central government spend with SMEs, GOV.UK collection, Cabinet Office, published 2 May 2019, last updated 15 August 2023
- Central government spend with SMEs 2021 to 2022, GOV.UK, Cabinet Office, published 15 August 2023
- GOV.UK Search API: "Central government spend with SMEs", filtered to Cabinet Office
- GOV.UK Search API: "direct spend with SMEs", filtered to Ministry of Defence
- GOV.UK Search API: "direct spend with SMEs", filtered to HM Revenue and Customs
- Procurement policy notes, GOV.UK collection, Cabinet Office
- GOV.UK Search API: "direct spend with SMEs", filtered to the Department for Transport
- GOV.UK Search API: "direct spend with SMEs", filtered to the Home Office