What Is PPN 006? Carbon Reduction Plans Explained

PPN 006 is the UK government procurement policy that requires suppliers bidding for major central government contracts — those worth more than £5 million a year, including VAT — to publish a Carbon Reduction Plan (CRP) committing to net zero by 2050 and reporting a defined set of their emissions. No compliant plan, no place in the competition. Here is PPN 006 explained for the suppliers it actually affects: who is in scope, what a plan must contain, and what is — and isn't — changing in 2026.

It helps to see PPN 006 as one lever within a wider set of UK carbon reporting requirements. Unlike SECR or ESOS, it isn't triggered by your company's size — it's triggered by the contracts you choose to bid for.

Key takeaways

• PPN 006 (formerly PPN 06/21) requires a published Carbon Reduction Plan from bidders for central government contracts above £5 million a year including VAT. It replaced PPN 06/21 for procurements started on or after 24 February 2025 under the Procurement Act 2023.
• A compliant CRP commits to net zero by 2050 (UK operations as a minimum) and reports Scope 1, Scope 2 and five specific Scope 3 categories.
• The plan must be board-approved, director-signed, published on your UK website and refreshed at least annually.
• Providing a compliant CRP is a condition of participation — a pass/fail gate, not a scored criterion. Miss it and you're excluded before evaluation.
• The big 2026 development isn't a change to PPN 006 itself but the NHS's April 2027 step-up, which will demand a far wider plan.

What is PPN 006?

PPN 006 is a Cabinet Office Procurement Policy Note titled Taking account of Carbon Reduction Plans in the procurement of major government contracts. First issued in June 2021 as PPN 06/21, it was reissued and renumbered to PPN 006 in February 2025 to sit under the Procurement Act 2023. The policy applies to procurements commenced on or after 24 February 2025; anything started before that date still runs under the old PPN 06/21. The two versions carry the same £5m threshold and the same emissions requirements, so in practice the content is unchanged — the guidance page was last updated on 10 July 2025 for terminology only, not a policy shift.

A Carbon Reduction Plan is the document at the heart of it. It's a short, public statement of your organisation's current emissions and its commitment to reach net zero by 2050, prepared to a set format the government specifies.

Who does PPN 006 apply to?

PPN 006 applies to all central government departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies when they award contracts for goods, services or works (other than special regime contracts) with an estimated value above £5 million per year including VAT, unless applying it wouldn't be relevant or proportionate. It also covers frameworks and dynamic markets where the individual contracts awarded under them exceed that £5m-a-year line.

It does not directly bind the wider public sector — the NHS, local authorities and universities aren't automatically caught — though many of these bodies have voluntarily adopted the same approach, and the NHS runs its own stricter regime (more on that below).

For suppliers, the key point is that scope follows the contract, not your headcount or turnover. An SME bidding for a £6m-a-year central government contract needs a compliant CRP just as a FTSE 100 firm would. The requirement lands on the bidding entity rather than automatically on its subcontractors, but prime contractors increasingly ask their own supply chains for a CRP or equivalent data, so the reach is broader than the headline threshold suggests.

What must a Carbon Reduction Plan include?

The PPN 006 technical standard sets out exactly what a compliant plan needs. In summary, it must:

• Commit to net zero by 2050 at the latest, covering the supplier's UK operations as a minimum.
• Report current-year emissions for all Scope 1 and Scope 2 sources, plus five defined Scope 3 categories (see below), against a stated baseline and a consistent reporting period.
• Use the right methodology — figures in tCO2e covering all seven Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gases, calculated with the UK Government's GHG conversion factors and the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (financial control, operational control or equity share boundary).
• Describe your carbon reduction measures — the environmental management measures in effect and the completed or planned initiatives that will apply during contract performance.
• Be approved and signed off by the board of directors (or equivalent) and signed by a named director, with job title and date.
• Be published on your UK website with a link in a prominent place — the homepage is recommended.
• Be reviewed and updated at least annually, within six months of your financial year-end.

The five Scope 3 categories

This is where suppliers most often trip up. PPN 006 does not ask for your entire Scope 3 footprint — only five named GHG Protocol categories:

GHG Protocol category	What it covers
4 — Upstream transportation & distribution	Moving goods and materials into and around your business, including third-party logistics you pay for
5 — Waste generated in operations	Treatment and disposal of the waste your operations produce
6 — Business travel	Employee travel for business in vehicles you don't own (flights, rail, hire cars)
7 — Employee commuting	Employees travelling between home and work
9 — Downstream transportation & distribution	Onward distribution of your sold products where you don't pay for the transport

Report these five alongside your full Scope 1 and Scope 2, and you've covered the emissions the standard asks for. It's a manageable, well-bounded exercise — which is deliberate.

What happens if you don't have one?

For an in-scope central government procurement, a compliant Carbon Reduction Plan is applied as a condition of participation. Bidders without one are excluded from the competition before their tender reaches award-stage evaluation. It doesn't matter how strong your price or your technical response is — a missing, out-of-date or non-compliant CRP takes you out of the running at the gate. That's why it pays to have a compliant plan in place before the tender you want appears, not scrambled together against a deadline.

What's changing — and what isn't — in 2026

Here's the part worth getting right, because there's a lot of confusion in the market. PPN 006 itself has not changed in 2026. As of mid-2026 there is no announced lowering of the £5m-a-year threshold and no expansion beyond the five Scope 3 categories for central government contracts. If you comply today, you comply.

What is changing — and what people frequently mistake for a PPN 006 update — is the NHS.

The NHS April 2027 step-change

Under guidance NHS England published on 9 June 2026, from 1 April 2027 NHS procurements worth £5 million a year or more (including VAT), plus all new frameworks and dynamic markets regardless of value, will require a Carbon Reduction Plan that goes well beyond PPN 006. Specifically, the NHS plan must cover:

• Global Scope 1, Scope 2 and all relevant Scope 3 emissions across the GHG Protocol's full 15 categories — not the five PPN 006 asks for.
• A net zero by 2050-or-earlier target for the whole organisation, not just UK operations.
• Board-level approval, website publication, and reporting in CO2e for all seven Kyoto gases.
• Disclosure of the proportion of offsetting used, with third-party validated targets flagged as best practice.

This applies under both the Procurement Act 2023 and the Provider Selection Regime. It builds on requirements the NHS already runs — a full CRP for £5m+ contracts since April 2023, and a simpler Net Zero Commitment for lower-value procurements since April 2024 — and it's part of a longer roadmap that points towards product-level carbon footprinting from 2028. If you sell to the NHS, the five-category PPN 006 plan is your floor, not your finish line.

How Carbon Managers can help

Let's be straight about what we do. We don't write your Carbon Reduction Plan or submit it for you — that board sign-off and public commitment has to sit with your organisation, and no consultant can honestly stand in for it.

What we do is build the thing every CRP stands on: a robust, GHG-Protocol-aligned emissions footprint. A PPN 006 plan is only as credible as the Scope 1, 2 and Scope 3 numbers underneath it, and those numbers have to be calculated with the UK Government's conversion factors, to the right boundary, in a format the technical standard recognises. Our carbon reporting service produces exactly that — a reporting-ready footprint you (and your board) can put your name to. We've been measuring business emissions since 2007, so the methodology the standard asks for is our day job.

Get the footprint right and the plan writes itself. And because the same footprint underpins SECR, tender questionnaires and — if you supply the NHS — the wider 2027 requirements, it's work you only need to do once and keep current.