Procurement glossary · Qualification and compliance
Exclusion grounds
Circumstances in which a contracting authority must or may exclude a supplier from a procurement. Mandatory grounds cover matters such as specified criminal convictions and certain tax offences. Discretionary grounds cover things like serious professional misconduct or significant contract failure. Both are declared at the selection stage.
Also called Mandatory and discretionary exclusions.
What it means in practice
Exclusion is a supplier-level question, not a bid-level one. It asks whether this organisation should be doing public work at all, and a mandatory ground ends the matter.
Discretionary grounds are where judgement enters and where suppliers most often mishandle the declaration. A past contract termination, a regulatory finding or an insolvency event in a connected company are the kinds of thing that have to be declared and explained rather than omitted and hoped over.
The instinct to leave something out is the wrong one. Authorities check, and a discovered non-declaration is far more damaging than the underlying matter usually was. Declaring an event and explaining what changed afterwards is a recognised route, and it has a name: self-cleaning.
Where suppliers get caught
Answering the exclusion questions from memory, at the end of the bid, by whoever is assembling the submission. They are legal declarations about the organisation and they need the person who actually knows the company's history, which is rarely the bid writer.
Common questions
What is the difference between mandatory and discretionary exclusion?
A mandatory ground requires the authority to exclude the supplier. A discretionary ground permits it to, on an assessment of the circumstances. Both have to be declared truthfully at selection.
Does a past contract termination exclude us?
Not automatically. It may engage a discretionary ground, which means the authority weighs the circumstances and what you did afterwards. Declaring it with evidence of the remedial steps taken is the route that works. Omitting it is the route that ends relationships.
Related terms
If a tender in front of you turns on this, send us the documents and the deadline and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth bidding. Call 020 3668 5488, or read the rest of the UK procurement glossary.