High Court finds DWP breached principle of transparency in procurement but says claimant not entitled to damages

The claimant, Involve Visual Collaboration, was the incumbent provider of audio-visual services and challenged the DWP’s decision to exclude it from the competition and award the contract to Accenture (UK).

The claim in Involve Visual Collaboration Ltd v The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2026] EWHC 2209 (TCC) was brought on the basis that there were breaches of the applicable Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

The DWP excluded the claimant from the procurement, notified in a contract award notice dated 7 April 2025, on the basis that it had failed to achieve the minimum threshold score for Question 6.4 in the “Technical Envelope”, with the consequence that the “Commercial Envelope” submitted was not marked.

The claimant’s case was that had its bid not been excluded and its Commercial Envelope evaluated, it would have been identified as the most economically advantageous tender (“MEAT”) and it would have been awarded the contract.

The DWP’s position was that the claimant was excluded from the procurement competition on valid grounds.

The Department told the court that the claimant’s proposal in response to Question 6.4 involved “URL masking” (i.e. where a customer is re-directed to a non-GOV.UK domain, but that is then ‘masked’ from the customer by showing a GOV.UK URL in the address bar), which did not meet the requirement for the video solution to be integrated and consumed from within DWP web pages.

It also argued that Involve Visual Collaboration would have been excluded in any event, for failure to comply with its conflict of interest obligations as an incumbent provider, in that there was participation in the detailed bid assembly by senior managers, contrary to mitigation measures agreed with the DWP.

Mrs Justice O’Farrell concluded as follows:

1. The DWP’s decision to re-moderate the scores for Question 6.4 was not in breach of the principle of transparency and/or manifestly erroneous.
2. The defendant was in breach of the principle of transparency, based on the use of extraneous material to evaluate the claimant’s proposal during the re-moderation but that breach had no effect on the outcome of the re-moderation or the procurement and caused no loss to the claimant.
3. The defendant’s approach in the re-moderation, namely, that URL masking was not capable of meeting the requirements of Question 6.4, was not manifestly erroneous.
4. The score awarded to the claimant for Question 6.4 on re-moderation was not manifestly erroneous.
5. The defendant was entitled to, and would have, rejected the claimant’s tender in any event for failure to comply with the conflict of interest rules in the ITT and the agreed mitigation measures.
6. The claimant was not entitled to any relief, save for a declaration that the defendant was in breach of the principles of transparency by referring to extraneous material in the re-moderation.

Mrs Justice O’Farrell decided that the claimant was not entitled to damages.

Monckton Chambers’ Ewan West KC and Alfred Artley, who acted for the DWP (instructed by the Government Legal Department) said: “The judgment… provides helpful guidance as to the proper conduct of moderation meetings and how the principle of transparency applies in practice to challenges to disqualification. It also illustrates the risks to tenderers of failing to comply with conflict of interest obligations.”