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The UK Government's Low Value Purchase System Is a Waste of Time

Recorded: May 29, 2026, 1:01 p.m.

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The UK Government’s Low Value Purchase System is a Waste of Time – Terence Eden’s Blog

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The UK Government's Low Value Purchase System is a Waste of Time

FoI government rant statistics · 450 words · Viewed ~218 times

It can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things.
Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy something below a certain threshold, they can contact any of the registered suppliers and just buy it. No complicated paperwork, cheaper prices, win-win!
Except, there's on annoying bit of bureaucracy. Every month I have to tell the Government Commercial Agency what business I've done.

Fair enough, I guess. Let them know how many paperclips I've sold to the Ministry of Administrative Affairs.
But there's a wrinkle. What if I've sold nothing? Well, I still have to log on, wait for an MFA code to be send, click through, and report "No Business".

I think that's a waste of time. But I wondered how much time it collectively wastes for the nation's small businesses.
So I filed a Freedom of Information request to see how many people have to sign in to let them know they haven't done any business. They replied quickly - although sent the data as a PDF rather than the requested machine-readable format.
Here's how much of a waste of time it is for everyone:

Date

Total Returns

Nil Return

Percent
age

Mar-25
768
729
94.9%

Apr-25
902
876
97.1%

May-25
948
923
97.4%

Jun-25
1,322
1,270
96.1%

Jul-25
1,406
1,355
96.4%

Aug-25
1,369
1,326
96.9%

Sep-25
1,416
1,362
96.2%

Oct-25
1,610
1,556
96.6%

Nov-25
1,713
1,654
96.6%

Dec-25
1,645
1,590
96.7%

Jan-26
1,536
1,487
96.8%

Feb-26
1,588
1,531
96.4%

Even if you assume that it only takes 2 minutes to fill in their form, that's over 2 days worth of time being wasted every month.
At best, 59 small businesses reported that they sold something via RM6237. Well over a thousand businesses are clicking on a button which, frankly, ought not to exist. Why isn't the onus on those buying using the system to report what they've spent and who they spent it with?
After clicking the button, I'm always asked to rate my experience using the service. I FoI'd that data as well but was told:

This information is not held. Feedback scores submitted are anonymised and only available as a service-wide view; consequently, we do not capture or hold results specific to RM6237

So the GCA are wasting everyone's time and do not track how annoying it is.

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ⅯⅯⅩⅩⅥ
ⓒ Terence Eden

Terence Eden argues that the UK Government’s RM6237 Low Value Purchase System is an inefficient use of time for small businesses. While acknowledging the system's intent to simplify purchasing for departments by allowing suppliers to purchase items below a certain threshold directly, the author contends that the accompanying bureaucracy introduces significant administrative overhead. The core frustration stems from the mandatory requirement for suppliers to report activity to the Government Commercial Agency, specifically necessitating the logging in, waiting for Multi-Factor Authentication codes, and reporting "No Business" when no sales have been made.

The author quantified this perceived time waste by filing a Freedom of Information request to determine the extent of this required reporting. The resulting data suggested that a very high percentage of reported transactions involved no sales, with figures consistently exceeding ninety-six percent across multiple months, such as March through February of the following year. Eden calculates that if even a minimal two minutes are spent on each form, this process consumes more than two days of time monthly for businesses navigating the system.

Furthermore, the author examined the collection of user feedback associated with the service. A separate inquiry revealed that feedback scores submitted by users are not recorded or held, as the information is anonymized and only available as a service-wide view; consequently, the Government Commercial Agency does not track the user experience or the level of annoyance associated with the system. This lack of data tracking limits the government's ability to monitor and improve the user experience for those utilizing the Low Value Purchase System.