What it is, in one line
A dynamic purchasing system (DPS) is an open list of pre-approved providers a council uses to commission independent special school placements for EHC plan holders; since 24 February 2025 new ones are ‘dynamic markets’. In plain terms, it is an electronic, ongoing list of providers who have passed a set of membership conditions. When a council needs a placement, it runs a further competition among the admitted providers rather than starting a fresh tender from scratch. The children placed this way will typically hold an EHC plan that names the type of setting they need.
How it differs from a closed framework
The feature that makes a DPS ‘dynamic’ is that providers can apply to join at any time during the life of the agreement, not only at one fixed opening window. A traditional framework is closed: the suppliers admitted at the outset are the only ones available until it expires. That open-door design is why councils use a DPS for high-needs placements in the non-maintained and independent special school market — it keeps a live pool of providers, gives visibility on price and quality, and lets new settings come on board as the market shifts. Several councils run their placement DPS regionally, through a consortium, to gain more leverage with a thin and expensive market.
Why the ‘dynamic market’ change matters
This is the part most committee papers and tender notices still get wrong: they describe a DPS as the current way to set one up. It is not. The Procurement Act 2023 went live on 24 February 2025 and replaced dynamic purchasing systems (and qualification systems) with a single successor tool, the dynamic market. A dynamic market works the same way a DPS did — an open list of qualified suppliers you can join on a rolling basis — but it applies across goods, services and works, not just the narrower categories the old rules allowed.
Existing DPS arrangements created under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 do not stop the day the Act commenced. They carry on under transitional rules, so a council’s current placement DPS keeps running for now. The key dates to hold:
- You can no longer create a new DPS. Any new placement list set up today is a dynamic market under the Procurement Act 2023.
- An existing DPS cannot have its period of validity changed after 23 February 2026.
- Existing DPS arrangements are deemed to expire by 23 February 2029, after which the placement provision needs to sit on a dynamic market or another compliant route.
For the wider picture of how councils buy in SEND provision, see joint commissioning for SEND and how LAs commission the therapies named in EHCPs.
Where the law comes from
Related
This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.