Rights And Obligations in Private Tendering

This paper considers whether there are rights and obligations attaching to parties involved in a purely private tendering process. Surprisingly there appears to be no direct authority on this point, all case law to date having arisen in the context of contract procurement by public bodies.

It will be argued that tenderers and procurers of private contracts can be subject to rights and obligations arising from preliminary "tender" contracts. Such contracts may be more rare than in the public procurement sphere given the absence of legislative regulation of private contracting as compared with contracting by public bodies. Such rights may usually be limited to (for example) a right to have a properly submitted tender considered.