What Urgency Provisions Are For
The Procurement Act 2023 — which replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 — provides public authorities with a route to procure goods and services without running a full competitive tender in circumstances of genuine urgency. Schedule 5 of the Act sets out the limited circumstances in which this is lawful. The core test is that the circumstances must be both unforeseeable and not attributable to the contracting authority.
This two-part test reflects a clear legislative intention: urgency provisions exist to deal with events beyond an authority's control and capacity to plan for — not to provide a convenient alternative to the time and effort of running a proper procurement. A flood, a sudden collapse of a critical supplier mid-contract, a genuine public health emergency — these are the kinds of circumstances that Schedule 5 was designed for. They share a common feature: no reasonable amount of forward planning could have prevented the need for emergency action.
The Cabinet Office's own procurement policy guidance reinforces this reading. It emphasises that urgency provisions should be the exception, not the rule, and that contracting authorities must be able to demonstrate that the urgency was genuinely unforeseeable and that they had not contributed to the situation through their own failure to plan.
The Procurement Act 2023: What Schedule 5 Actually Says
Schedule 5 of the Procurement Act 2023 permits a "limited tendering procedure" — which includes direct award — where the contracting authority can demonstrate that: (a) the goods, services or works are required as a matter of extreme urgency; (b) the urgency is the result of unforeseeable events; and (c) it is not possible to comply with the time limits applicable to competitive tendering procedures.
All three elements must be satisfied. An authority cannot invoke urgency simply because running a tender would be inconvenient or time-consuming — that is true of every procurement. The unforeseeability requirement is the critical constraint. It means that an authority facing a known, long-running problem cannot routinely rely on Schedule 5 to avoid competition. If the need was foreseeable — and the authority should have procured in advance — urgency is not available as a justification.
The Base One Contract: A Case Study
Against this legal background, consider the Base One Holdings contract. Brighton & Hove City Council awarded £18.86 million for temporary housing management to Base One Holdings Ltd on 31 December 2025 — the final day of the year, and the final day before the council's financial year entered its final quarter. The award was made under Schedule 5.
The council's temporary accommodation challenges are not new. Its own budget reports have flagged rising demand, growing costs, and forecast overspends for multiple consecutive years. The council placed approximately 520 households per night in temporary accommodation in November 2025. The budget for this service was £28 million for 2025–26, with a forecast overspend of £4.8 million. These are not the characteristics of an unforeseeable crisis. They are the characteristics of a chronic, well-documented systemic problem.
The coalition's central challenge is this: how can the council credibly assert that the need for a housing management contract of this nature was "unforeseeable" when its own internal documents demonstrate that the need has been known, quantified, and reported for years? The answer, we submit, is that it cannot — and that the invocation of Schedule 5 in these circumstances warrants formal independent scrutiny.
The Procurement Timeline Question
One of the most important questions in any direct-award case is the procurement timeline. When was the decision made that a new contract was needed? When was Base One Holdings first approached or identified? Were any other providers considered, even informally? What was the gap between the identification of the need and the award date of 31 December 2025?
These questions matter for two reasons. First, they bear directly on the unforeseeability test. If Base One Holdings was in pre-contract discussions with the council weeks or months before the award date, that suggests the need was known well in advance — undermining the urgency rationale. Second, they bear on the question of democratic oversight. If the need was known in September, why was a procurement not launched in September? The answer to that question — whatever it is — should be on the public record.
The coalition has reviewed the published decision record. It does not contain a detailed account of the procurement timeline. We are calling for that account to be published.
What the Law Requires After a Direct Award
Under the Procurement Act 2023, contracting authorities that use limited tendering procedures must publish a contract award notice, including the reasons for using the procedure. This publication requirement is a transparency mechanism — it allows the public, the press, and oversight bodies to examine whether the urgency was genuine.
However, publication of a notice is not the same as substantive transparency. A notice can confirm that Schedule 5 was cited without providing the evidence base for that citation. The coalition's view is that a contract of this value — nearly £19 million of public money — requires a more detailed public account than a standard award notice. The Audit & Standards Committee is the appropriate body to examine this in detail.
A Pattern — or an Isolated Incident?
The coalition is not in a position to assert, on the basis of currently available public information, that the Base One Holdings award is part of a systematic pattern of urgency misuse. What we can say is that the questions raised by this contract apply with equal force to any other direct award made in Brighton & Hove's housing portfolio under urgency provisions since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force.
We are calling on the council to publish a full register of all direct awards made under Schedule 5 urgency provisions in the housing and temporary accommodation portfolio since February 2025. That register should include the contract value, the supplier, the date of award, and the published rationale for the urgency in each case. If the Base One Holdings award is genuinely an isolated emergency response, that transparency will demonstrate it. If it is not, the public deserves to know.
What the Audit & Standards Committee Should Examine
The coalition has made a formal submission to Brighton & Hove City Council's Audit & Standards Committee. We are asking the committee to examine the following questions in relation to the Base One Holdings contract and any comparable awards:
- What evidence was relied upon to satisfy the "unforeseeable" test in Schedule 5, given the council's multi-year documentation of the TA crisis?
- What was the procurement timeline? When was the need identified, and when was Base One Holdings first considered or approached?
- What financial due diligence was conducted on a company with approximately £55,000 in reported assets before awarding a £18.86 million contract?
- Was any benchmarking conducted against market rates for temporary housing management? If so, by whom and using what comparators?
- Who held the delegated authority to approve this contract, and was this level of authority appropriate for a commitment of this size and duration?
Coalition Demands
The coalition calls for: full public disclosure of the Schedule 5 justification for the Base One Holdings contract; a register of all direct awards under urgency provisions in the housing portfolio since February 2025; an independent Audit & Standards Committee review; competitive tendering for all future housing management contracts above £100,000; and a procurement transparency policy commitment from Cabinet.
"An emergency procurement provision that becomes routine is no longer an exception — it is a policy. And policy requires democratic accountability."
Public Interest
This investigation is published in the public interest. The coalition has relied on publicly available legal texts, published council documents, and official budget reports. We have sought to be accurate and proportionate. We are not asserting that any decision-maker acted in bad faith. We are asserting that the public interest demands answers to the questions this contract raises — and that those answers should be on the public record before a six-year, £18.86 million commitment binds Brighton & Hove residents for the better part of a decade.