Part 3: Award of public contracts and procedures Exclusions and modifications Section 27: Excluding suppliers from a competitive flexible procedure
Subsection (1) requires a contracting authority to determine for all competitive flexible procedures whether a supplier is an excluded or excludable supplier before allowing them to participate.  This means  that contracting authorities must consider: whether each supplier meets any of the mandatory or discretionary grounds for exclusion, and if so whether the issue in question is likely to occur again or is continuing; whether the supplier is to be treated as an excluded supplier for other reasons (see sections 16(5), 30(6) and 82(4)); as well as checking whether the supplier is on the debarment list. This check must happen before allowing the supplier to participate in the procedure (see subsection (5). This obligation does not apply to open procedures as these are single stage procedures where exclusions can only be considered when tenders are assessed - see section 26 (excluding suppliers from a competitive award).
	Subsection (2) places an obligation on a contracting authority to exclude a supplier from participating or progressing in a competitive flexible procedure if it determines that the supplier is an excluded supplier.  Subsection (3) allows a contracting authority to exclude a supplier from participating or progressing in a competitive flexible procedure if it determines that the supplier is an excludable supplier. Reference in these subsections to a supplier progressing in a competitive flexible procedure ensures that contracting authorities must consider exclusions at the appropriate stage of the procedure.
	Subsection (4) requires a contracting authority, where it is excluding a supplier by virtue of one of its associated persons, to first notify the supplier of its intention to exclude them and give the supplier the opportunity to replace the associated person with a suitable alternative. A supplier must or may be excluded under this provision only if the supplier fails to replace the associated person. An "associated person" is defined in section 26(4).
	Subsection (5) says that a supplier participating in a competitive flexible procedure refers to a supplier progressing beyond requests to participate in the procurement or beyond submission of tenders (which will depend on the process adopted by the contracting authority, e.g. if the process includes a stage where requests to participate in the procurement are required then this refers to that stage).