How to Verify Company Eligibility for Funding and Procurement Checks

The rules for verifying who you’re funding or contracting with have changed. The Procurement Act 2023 has been in force since February 2025, the Subsidy Control Act 2022 replaced the old state aid regime, and grant competitions keep attracting more applicants than assessors have time to check by hand. Verification isn’t optional paperwork anymore. It’s the thing that determines whether a procurement decision or a grant award can survive scrutiny.

This guide sets out a practical framework for verifying company eligibility, built for procurement teams and grant administrators who need something usable day-to-day.

Why verifying company eligibility matters

Public accountability and value for money

Public money spent through procurement or grants comes with an obligation to show the recipient was properly checked. A verification process that can be explained and evidenced protects the decision as well as the budget.

Procurement Act 2023 compliance

The Act sets out specific exclusion grounds, a new debarment list, and registration requirements that didn’t exist under the old regime. Meeting these obligations means actually verifying supplier information, since collecting it on a form isn’t enough on its own.

Grant scheme integrity and fraud prevention

Grant applications are self-reported by nature. Independent verification is what catches misstated eligibility, whether that’s deliberate or simply careless, before it becomes public money spent on an ineligible applicant.

Reputational and legal risk protection

A procurement decision or grant award that’s later challenged puts the organisation’s process on display. Weak verification turns a routine dispute into a much bigger problem.

Efficient use of procurement and assessment capacity

Manual verification doesn’t scale to the volumes procurement teams and grant schemes now handle. A structured process means the people doing the checking spend their time on judgement calls, not on repetitive lookups.

The regulatory context in 2026

The Procurement Act 2023

The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, replacing the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and related legislation. It changes what contracting authorities need to check about suppliers and how those checks need to be recorded.

The Central Digital Platform and supplier registration

Suppliers can register on the Central Digital Platform, the enhanced Find a Tender service, from the Act’s commencement date. From April 2026, registration became compulsory for all public sector contracts, including those below the usual thresholds – so the Act’s obligations have arrived in stages rather than all at once, and it’s worth checking which stage applies to a given contract.

Mandatory and discretionary exclusion grounds

The Act expands the exclusion grounds contracting authorities must consider. Mandatory grounds cover convictions for offences including fraud, bribery, money laundering, tax offences, and, new under this Act, corporate manslaughter and cartel involvement. Discretionary grounds cover matters like poor past performance, professional misconduct, and, also new, environmental misconduct. Both categories now extend to a supplier’s connected persons and subcontractors as well as the bidding entity itself.

The debarment list

The Act introduces a centrally managed debarment list. A supplier debarred on mandatory grounds faces exclusion from all public contracting for five years. Checking a supplier against the list, and understanding whether any connected persons appear on it, is now a standard part of eligibility verification.

The Subsidy Control Act 2022 and grant funding compliance

The Subsidy Control Act 2022 replaced the EU state aid regime for UK grant funding. It sets its own eligibility and reporting requirements, meaning grant administrators need to verify a different, though overlapping, set of criteria to the old approach.

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 and section 54 statements

Larger suppliers are required to publish an annual slavery and human trafficking statement under section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Checking whether a supplier has published one, and whether it’s current, is a standard part of supply chain due diligence.

Sanctions screening

Screening against the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation’s consolidated list remains a legal requirement independent of procurement or grant-specific rules. It applies to anyone doing business with a sanctioned entity, including organisations outside the public sector.

What you need to verify, and the data that answers it

Identity

Confirm the registered name, company number, and status of the entity you’re dealing with, and reconcile that against any trading name used on a quote, invoice or application – these aren’t always the same thing. Companies House registration details, current status and filing history are the baseline for this.

Legal status

Check whether the company is active, dormant, in administration, or dissolved. Status can change between an application being submitted and a decision being made, so this needs checking again close to the point of award, not just once at the start.

Financial health

Filed accounts, going concern indicators, and other financial signals help establish whether a company is in a position to deliver a contract or make good use of a grant.

SME status

Grant schemes and some procurement contracts apply small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) eligibility thresholds based on headcount, turnover, and balance sheet total. These thresholds vary by scheme and shouldn’t be confused with the size categories used purely for Companies House filing purposes, which serve a different function. Filed financial data gives a current answer; a self-declared status may already be out of date by the time it’s checked.

Ownership and control

Persons with Significant Control (PSC), beneficial ownership, and group structure all affect eligibility, particularly under the Procurement Act’s exclusion grounds, which extend to connected persons. PSC and group structure data let you verify beneficial ownership and catch nested or foreign parent structures that a form alone won’t surface.

Sanctions and exclusion screening

Check the company and its known connected persons against the debarment list and sanctions lists as a matter of course, not only when something looks unusual. Automated matching is faster and more consistent than checking manually, particularly at volume.

Track record

Previous public contracts, previous grants, and any history of disputes or poor performance all inform an eligibility decision, particularly under the Act’s discretionary exclusion grounds for past performance. Previous grants and other funding activity are checkable through cross-programme participation data (below); previous public contract performance and disputes typically sit in the contracting authority’s own records and any relevant supplier-performance systems, rather than in third-party company data.

Cross-programme participation

For grant applicants, visibility into other funding a company is already receiving – whether that’s other Innovate UK schemes, Research and Development tax credits, or Enterprise Investment Scheme activity – helps avoid duplicate funding and informs additionality judgements.

Sector activity

Standard Industrial Classification codes give a starting point, but they’re self-selected and often outdated. A classification built from what a company actually says about its activity, rather than a self-selected code, gives a more accurate read on sector fit.

Compliance

A current Modern Slavery Act statement, relevant sector-specific regulation, and adequate insurance are all standard compliance checks that sit alongside eligibility verification proper. These are generally confirmed directly with the supplier or applicant, or against the relevant public register, rather than through company data providers – worth building into the process as a separate step so it isn’t assumed to be covered elsewhere.

Verified contact details

Once a decision moves to interview, negotiation, or further diligence, verified contact details save time that would otherwise go into tracking someone down.

A framework for efficient eligibility verification

Step 1: Confirm identity against Companies House using the company number

Always verify against the company number rather than the name on the quote or application. Trading names and registered names frequently differ, and a name-only check is the easiest way to verify the wrong entity.

Step 2: Check active status and financial health

Confirm the company is active rather than dormant, dissolved, or in administration, and review filed accounts for going concern or financial health indicators relevant to the contract or grant size.

Step 3: Verify SME status where relevant

Where SME status affects eligibility, check headcount, turnover, and balance sheet total against the applicable thresholds for that specific scheme or contract, rather than assuming one definition applies everywhere.

Step 4: Screen ownership, PSC and beneficial ownership

Confirm who owns and controls the company, and check whether any connected persons, parent companies or beneficial owners raise exclusion concerns under the Procurement Act.

Step 5: Sanctions and debarment list screening

Run the company and its known connected persons against the debarment list and sanctions lists before proceeding further.

Step 6: Cross-programme or previous contract check

For grants, check cross-programme participation to avoid duplicate funding. For procurement, check previous public contract performance against the discretionary exclusion grounds for poor performance, using the contracting authority’s own records.

Step 7: Record the verification evidence

Log what was checked, when, and against what source. This is the record that makes a later challenge defensible, and it’s often the step that gets skipped under time pressure.

How Beauhurst helps with funding and procurement verification

Verifying suppliers and grant applicants one at a time, across Companies House, sanctions lists and financial filings, doesn’t scale to the volumes procurement teams and grant administrators now handle. 

Beauhurst brings that verification work into one place, covering identity, ownership, financial health, SME status, cross-programme participation and sector fit. It’s worth being clear about scope, too: verifying a supplier’s previous public contract performance or checking a current Modern Slavery Act statement still sits outside company data and needs its own step in the process, as set out above.

Beauhurst covers the UK, Germany and Ireland’s private companies in a single dataset, so identity and status checks against Companies House can be run instantly instead of looked up one at a time. 

• Ownership, PSC and group structure are all visible together, making it faster to confirm beneficial ownership and catch nested or foreign parent structures. 
• Filed accounts and a calculated Risk category give a quick, evidenced read on financial health, supporting due diligence without a manual dive into every set of accounts. 
• SME status is calculated directly from filed financial data, giving a current answer rather than one that’s already out of date by the time it’s checked. 
• Visibility across Innovate UK grants, catapult engagement, Research and Development tax credits, and Enterprise Investment Scheme or Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme activity means duplicate funding is visible before an award is made, not after. 
• Beauhurst’s buzzword-based classification, built from what companies actually say about their activity, supports sector-fit verification beyond what SIC codes alone can show. 
• And when a decision moves to interview or further diligence, verified contact details mean the team’s time goes into the conversation itself.

BeauhurstImpact is built for public sector procurement teams and grant administrators who need eligibility, ownership, financial, and cross-programme data brought together in a single, auditable view, instead of assembled from scratch for every supplier or applicant.

Building a verification process that holds up

The regulatory bar has moved. The Procurement Act 2023 and the Subsidy Control Act 2022 both expect verification decisions to be evidenced, and good faith alone no longer satisfies that. Rising application and tender volumes mean that evidence has to be produced efficiently or it won’t get produced at all.

A consistent framework, backed by independently verified data rather than self-reported claims, is what lets procurement teams and grant administrators move at the pace their volumes demand without losing the audit trail a public body is expected to keep.

If you’re reviewing your verification process ahead of a new procurement round or grant competition, speak to our team about BeauhurstImpact to see how it fits alongside your existing workflow.