Coverage of PPN 026 has settled on one line: carbon is out of social value scoring. That is accurate for the contracts it covers. What tends to get dropped is how few contracts that actually is.
The note is blunt about its own reach. PPN 026 "applies only to central government departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies", and it adds that other public sector contracting authorities "may wish to adopt the approach set out in this PPN". That is an invitation, not a rule. Your county council is not bound by it. Neither is the Welsh Government, a Scottish local authority, a university or a housing association. The new weightings, a minimum 10% for central government contracts from £1m to under £5m and 20% at £5m and above, apply to procurements commenced on or after 1 January 2027, with supporting guidance promised for autumn 2026.
Two documents, two different jobs
PPN 026 and PPN 006 keep getting treated as one story. They are not. PPN 026 governs how a buyer scores the social value section of your bid. PPN 006 is a condition of participation, a pass or fail gate at selection, on central government contracts with an estimated value above £5 million per year including VAT, for procurements advertised on or after 24 February 2025.
Read PPN 026 end to end and you will not find carbon, net zero or PPN 006 mentioned anywhere in it. It does not amend them. The Carbon Reduction Plan requirement sits in a separate note that is still in force, still asks for Scope 1 and 2 emissions plus a defined subset of Scope 3, and still asks you to commit to net zero by 2050 in the UK.
Wales set its own threshold
Welsh public bodies work to WPPN 006, which asks for a Carbon Reduction Plan or equivalent at the selection stage on contracts valued at £6 million or more including VAT. It is a qualification gate and nothing more. The note is explicit that CRPs "must not be used to differentiate between suppliers", because the document describes your own footprint rather than how you would deliver the contract.
Below £6 million, Welsh bodies are advised to take a risk-based view and apply the requirement at their discretion in high emission categories. If you supply construction, transport, manufacturing or anything energy-hungry to a Welsh buyer, assume the question can turn up on a smaller contract. Wales points suppliers at the same UK government template, so a plan built for PPN 006 generally does the job.
Scotland asks the same question in a different form
Scotland does not mirror PPN 006 at all. Buyers there use the Single Procurement Document, and Scottish Government guidance explains that standardised statements for SPD question 4C7 let a buyer ask for evidence of capability to address the climate emergency, in the form of a Bidder Climate Change Plan, at the selection stage. No fixed contract value is attached to it, so whether it appears is a judgement the buying team makes.
The fuller version of that template, used on priority contracts, wants your Scope 1, 2 and 3 emission sources, calculated Scope 1 and 2 figures, a timeline for planned reductions and the actions behind them. The lighter version asks for sources and actions only. Different paperwork, same underlying numbers. Measure properly once and filling it in is largely a transcription job.
Councils and the NHS run their own rules
Local government was never in scope for PPN 006 either, which has not stopped plenty of councils from lifting the template straight into a selection questionnaire. NHS England maintains its own carbon reduction plan requirements for suppliers. And because PPN 026 does not reach councils, a local authority stays free to keep climate inside its own social value criteria, where it is scored rather than pass or fail.
Add that up and the practical position for most SMEs barely moved. If you bid to a mix of central departments, councils, Welsh bodies, Scottish bodies and NHS trusts, your odds of getting through a procurement year without being asked for a CRP are poor. One change at the centre, to one scoring model, from 2027, does not alter that.
What to do about it
Build one plan and keep it current. Use the UK government template, since that is the format central government asks for and the one Wales points to. Report a baseline year and your current year honestly, cover Scope 1, 2 and the required Scope 3 categories, get it signed off at board level, and publish it where a buyer can find it on your own website.
That single document clears the central government gate, satisfies Wales directly, and supplies nearly everything a Scottish buyer's form asks for. What trips bids up is rarely the arithmetic. It is a plan that is eighteen months out of date, unsigned, or missing from the site on the day someone checks. CarbonVerified builds that document in the right format, though the habit matters more than the tool. Know your numbers, keep the plan published, and update it every year.
