Resumen de Public Procurement Law, Public Bodies, and the General Interest: Perspectives from Higher Education

Jennifer Lane

• This article examines the interaction of EC public procurement law with the legislative framework governing higher education in England and Wales. It focuses on the impact of this interaction on changing status of higher education institutions, organisations that are at the margins of the much‐discussed public–private divide in law. The Higher Education Act 2004 is viewed as a driver of potential change in status, and a distinction is drawn between mechanisms which appear to support the introduction of change and those that instead introduce fluctuation and lead to concerns for legal certainty at the margins of public law. The study thus also has wider relevance where public‐sector reform is premised upon organisational forms with hybrid or ambiguous status.