OGC revised contracts: first glance

Peter at Naked Law has spotted that the OGC has issued draft revised model contract (see Naked Law story). He reports that there are a number of revisions that are an improvement, from a supplier's perpective, but the lack of changes to some provisions - notably, the audit rights - will disappoint suppliers.

A brief look at a summary of the revisions confirms that whilst the changes will improve things, the contracting situation is still going to cause many difficulties for suppliers to the public sector. For example, public sector contracting bodies will still have the right to unilaterally change the service credit regime, something that suppliers would never normally agree to. The revised model contract allows suppliers to challenge such changes, and the public sector body must act reasonably when considering such a challenge, but this is still far from ideal for suppliers.