Following publication of our Request for Expressions of Interest and extensive market engagement we determined a contract award in favour of Creditsafe under regulation 32 of the Public Contract Regulations 2015 on the basis that:

(b the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for the following reason (ii)competition is absent for technical reasons,

And that:

no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement

The Commissions primary concern when using the credit platform is to verify the information it has already been given by companies or individuals seeking a gambling licence. As such in vetting gambling licence applications we will look at ownership, controlling interests, shareholders, court judgements and adverse media as well as other factors. Furthermore we need the facility to be able to access this information worldwide as a substantial amount of applications come from companies based outside the UK. The portal is also used as part of our Enforcement and Intelligence activity. As a result of the exercise we conducted with suppliers who responded to our EOI, we were able to determine that only Creditsafe currently provides a credit checking platform with the full functionality that we need.