School solar panel procurement, from three quotes to a full tender

Which rules govern a school solar purchase?

The Procurement Act 2023 governs public procurement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and it replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 when it came into force on 24 February 2025.

Schools and academy trusts are contracting authorities, so a solar installation bought with public money is a public contract. The 2015 regulations continue to apply to procurements that had already started before that date, which is why a long running energy contract may still be administered under the old regime. Anything a school starts now falls under the Act.

Three features of the Act matter more to a school solar project than the rest. The first is the notice regime, which is published through the Find a Tender service rather than through a local portal. The second is the emphasis on recording material decisions as the process runs, which changes what a file has to contain rather than only what the outcome has to be. The third is that contract management duties continue after award, so a maintenance obligation or a long term energy supply arrangement is not finished business on the day it is signed.

The Act's financial thresholds are set by regulation, are stated inclusive of VAT and are amended periodically, most recently with effect from 1 January 2026. We deliberately do not print a figure here, because a number on a web page outlives its accuracy. Check the current thresholds against the Cabinet Office guidance and Schedule 1 to the Act before you decide which route a scheme falls into.

Why any school power purchase agreement now has to use the DfE template

The Department for Education requires every power purchase agreement on the school estate to use its own PPA and land lease template, and that requirement took effect on 15 July 2026.

This is the single most consequential thing on this page and almost nothing written by installers mentions it. A power purchase agreement is the arrangement in which a funder pays for, owns and maintains the array and the school buys the electricity it generates, usually alongside a lease of the roof or the land underneath it. Because that lease is a disposal of an interest in school land, it needs departmental consent, and the department has now fixed the form the agreement takes. In its own words, "from 15 July 2026, any PPA for the school estate will need to use the DfE PPA and land lease template".

Three practical consequences follow. First, the department considered land consent applications under the previous arrangements up to and including 15 July 2026, so a school part way through a deal on older terms is in a different position from one starting now. Second, approvals are paused while the templates are tested, a pause the department describes as a few months during which it will not approve any new cases, with templates expected in autumn 2026. Third, the department will approve cases only where the installation is on "the roof of buildings in good condition", and says applications will not be approved where the roof condition is poor.

That last condition is the one to act on now. It puts the structural survey ahead of the commercial conversation rather than after it, because a roof that will not pass on condition cannot be made to work by improving the contract. If a supplier is offering a school a no upfront cost arrangement on its own paperwork, that is the point to stop and check the position, because an agreement signed outside the template is an agreement the department is not going to consent to.

How an academy trust's duties differ from a maintained school's

The statutory layer is identical for both and the layer above it is not, because an academy trust answers to the Academy Trust Handbook while a maintained school answers to its local authority.

An academy trust is required to secure value for money, to have a competitive procurement procedure written into its financial framework, and to observe the procurement rules and thresholds in the Procurement Act 2023 and the Find a Tender service. The handbook also points trusts at the departmental Buying for schools guidance, requires them to consider departmental buying opportunities and record that decision-making, and mandates certain arrangements outright. Energy is one of them: a trust must use the Department for Education Energy for Schools service or an approved energy deal, or demonstrate equivalent value when a contract renews. That duty bites directly on any solar arrangement structured as an energy supply rather than as a capital purchase.

A maintained school works to a different stack. Its governing body carries formal responsibility for financial management, operates within the local authority's scheme for financing schools and its contract standing orders, and confirms its arrangements annually through the Schools Financial Value Standard, which is submitted to the authority. Those standing orders frequently set lower quote and tender thresholds than the departmental guidance does, and where they do, the local figure is the binding one. The first question a business manager should ask is not what the law permits but what their own rules require.

One further difference is worth knowing before a large scheme. A trust spending above £100 million in a financial year has to publish pipeline notices for planned procurements above £2 million including VAT, and any contract with an estimated value over £5 million needs at least three key performance indicators with an annual assessment against them. Most school solar projects sit well under those figures, but a trust-wide estate programme can reach them.

That is the practical reason a trust tends to approach this at estate scale rather than building by building. A single site usually holds blocks of several different ages, which means several different structural answers and several different mounting designs, and yet for procurement purposes they are one value if they are bought as one programme. Deciding the scope of the contract is therefore a decision about which rules apply, and it is worth taking deliberately rather than discovering later.

When three quotes are enough, and when solar panels for schools need a tender

The Department for Education sets out five buying routes for schools, and which one applies is decided by the value of the contract rather than by what is being bought.

The bands in the departmental guidance are guidance rather than statute. It treats low value as under £10,000 and medium value as £10,000 to £40,000, with high value above that, and the statutory thresholds in the Procurement Act sit above all of them. Your own rules may be tighter, and where they are, they win.

Two things catch schools out on a solar project specifically. The first is aggregation. The value is the whole contract, so an estate programme covering four buildings is one value rather than four, and splitting a scheme into smaller contracts to stay below a threshold is not a lawful way to avoid the rules. The second is contract term. A no upfront cost arrangement in which a funder owns the array and the school buys the electricity it generates is valued across the whole term, not on the capital that changes hands on day one, and it is usually a much larger number than the equivalent purchase.

Which frameworks a school can buy school rooftop solar through

A framework agreement is a pre-competed list of suppliers on agreed terms, and calling off one is a compliant route at any level of spend, including above the statutory thresholds.

For solar specifically, the main public sector route is the Demand Management and Renewables agreement RM6314, operated by the Government Commercial Agency, which is what Crown Commercial Service became on 1 April 2026. Its lots cover solar photovoltaic, battery storage, heat pumps, heat networks and carbon consultancy, and they run across design and feasibility, installation, maintenance and decommissioning. The agreement started on 24 March 2023 and ends on 23 March 2027 with no option to extend, so check its status before building a programme around it. A dynamic purchasing arrangement, RM6313, sits alongside it.

The Department for Education separately approves frameworks for schools and lists them by category on its Get help buying for schools service, and its guidance is to consider an approved framework first where one is available. Regional public sector buying organisations operate their own construction and energy frameworks that schools and colleges are commonly named on, and a local authority often has one a maintained school can use directly.

Calling off a framework does not transfer responsibility. Before you rely on one, confirm that the provider is a contracting authority, that the required notices were published, that schools or academy trusts are explicitly named as eligible users, and that the terms have not been modified in a way the Act does not allow. Then follow the framework's own call-off procedure, whether that is direct selection against stated criteria or a mini-competition. A mini-competition is usually the better answer on a solar project, because the scope varies so much between buildings that a direct award risks pricing the wrong scheme.

What solar PV for academy trusts has to be published on Find a Tender

Find a Tender is the central service on which contracting authorities publish procurement notices, and the Academy Trust Handbook requires trusts to use it.

A trust registers as a buyer using its GOV.UK One Login account, and that registration is worth doing before a scheme is urgent rather than during it. Which notices a solar project generates depends on the route and the value: a tender notice where the opportunity is advertised, a notice where a framework is established, and an award notice published before the contract is executed. Pipeline notices apply only to the largest buyers.

Two administrative points save trusts some confusion. Academy trusts are exempt from submitting payment compliance notices and from publishing information about payments over £30,000, both of which apply to other contracting authorities. And publishing a notice is not a substitute for the internal record: the decisions, the criteria and the scores still have to be documented inside the trust, because the notice records the outcome rather than the reasoning.

How to evaluate the bids rather than just rank the prices

An evaluation compares what each supplier has actually offered, so a school solar panel installation is awarded on credentials, scope and whole life cost together rather than on the lowest figure in the covering letter.

Start with credentials, because they are the quickest way to narrow a field. Ask whether the installer is MCS certified, since certification is what an energy supplier will want before it pays the school for exported units, and ask what comparable experience the firm has on occupied public sector buildings rather than on houses. Installers who work mainly on homes are not wrong about solar power, they are simply not set up for a safeguarded site with a term-time programme, and their method statements show it. Ask for two referenceable school or college projects and speak to the estates contact at each.

Then compare scope rather than price. Whether the bid includes scaffold to every elevation, what the structural appraisal covers, which grid application work is priced and which is excluded, whether battery storage or solar battery storage options are priced separately, and what the monitoring systems actually deliver are all places where two figures diverge for reasons nothing to do with value. A guide price against an incomplete scope is not a guide to anything.

Finally, price the whole life rather than the installation. Maintenance, inverter replacement, monitoring subscription and the eventual decommissioning are all real, and a bid that omits them is not cheaper, only less complete. Public sector organisations buying renewable energy systems are buying an asset that has to be maintained for twenty five years, and the evaluation should weight that work properly against the solar panel installation cost. The benefits of a well evaluated award show up a decade later, when the solar energy the array produces is still being measured and somebody still answers the phone about it.