Guides for UK FM contractors
Step-by-step playbooks on bidding, compliance, and winning public-sector cleaning, security, and grounds maintenance contracts.
What you'll learn
Whether you're a local commercial cleaning company chasing your first council contract, or an established FM provider working through the shift from PAS 91 to the Common Assessment Standard, this hub is the path. Every guide walks the same procurement lifecycle: find the right tenders, pass the compliance gate, draft a Selection Questionnaire that scores, and price your bid without racing to the bottom.
We cover the entities the public sector actually scores you on. SSIP and Common Assessment Standard accreditation, CHAS, SMAS and Constructionline pre-qualification routes, the SQ under PPN 03/23, the National TOMs social value framework, BS EN 1276 and EN 14476 disinfectant standards for NHS work, and the live portals every English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish buyer is required to publish to.
- Bidding Strategy
School Cleaning Tenders: What Headteachers and MATs Look For (2026)
School cleaning contracts are bought three ways: single-school tenders run by the school or a procurement adviser, MAT-wide tenders across a trust's academies, and local authority or DfE-approved frameworks. CleanTender logged 83 school and academy cleaning notices by September 2026, with a median published value of about £1.0m and most new contracts running about three years. Buyers score safeguarding (enhanced DBS under KCSIE 2026), working around the school day, holiday cleans, TUPE handling and local management. Here is what they want and how to write it.
27 Sept 2026 · 15 min read
- Bidding Strategy
Bid Writing Examples UK: 7 Tender Answers Scored Weak vs Strong (2026)
A high-scoring tender answer repeats the buyer's question back as a commitment, proves it with a number, names who does what and when, and shows how the buyer can check it. This guide gives seven UK bid writing examples (cleaning, security, grounds maintenance, waste, catering, social value and mobilisation with TUPE), each written twice, weak and strong, and scored on a published 0-5 council scale.
27 Sept 2026 · 16 min read
- Bidding Strategy
Cleaning Contracts for Sale (UK): Buy a Round or Win Your Own?
You can buy private cleaning contracts and rounds in the UK. You can't buy public-sector ones. Here's how a purchase really works (TUPE, assignment, client consent, retention), when it beats bidding, and when tendering is the cheaper route to the same growth.
27 Sept 2026 · 10 min read
- Bidding Strategy
Window Cleaning Tenders UK: Where to Find Them and How to Win (2026)
UK public-sector window cleaning tenders appear on Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI and council portals. Buyers are councils, housing associations, universities, colleges, schools and NHS trusts. They want a Work at Height Regulations 2005 method statement built on water-fed poles, SSIP accreditation such as CHAS, the right insurance, and a clear per-visit price schedule. Here is where to look, what they score, and when to walk away.
27 Sept 2026 · 12 min read
- Bidding Strategy
Facilities Management Tenders: How to Find and Win UK FM Contracts (2026)
A facilities management tender is a public buyer's invitation to bid for an FM contract. It covers FM services either bundled into one contract (Total FM) or broken into single service lines like cleaning, security, grounds, waste, or catering. The government's own frameworks split FM into Total, Hard, and Soft lots, and the Soft FM lot maps directly onto those five services. Here is who buys FM, where the notices publish, and why single-service lots are the realistic entry point for most SMEs.
2 Jul 2026 · 14 min read
- Bidding Strategy
Security Tenders: How to Find, Bid and Win UK Contracts (2026)
A security tender is a public invitation to bid for a guarding, patrol, CCTV or key-holding contract. UK buyers publish them free on Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI and council e-procurement portals. From 1 January 2026, contracts worth £207,720+ (inc VAT) from councils, NHS trusts and housing associations must appear on Find a Tender. Here is where to look, how to set free alerts, what the contracts are worth, and how to bid.
2 Jul 2026 · 14 min read
FAQs
Quick answers about UK FM tendering
- A cleaning tender is a public-sector buyer publishing the job on a portal (Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales or eTendersNI), with fixed scoring rules every supplier has to answer against. A standard commercial cleaning contract is a private buyer awarding the work directly, often without a formal bid. Public tenders pay on 30+ day invoice terms, score quality and price separately, and almost always carry social value and TUPE obligations that private contracts don't.
- Yes for almost any council work and effectively all NHS cleaning. The Safety Schemes in Procurement umbrella has 15 Core Criteria that every member scheme (CHAS, SMAS, SafeContractor, Constructionline) tests against. Hold one and the Deem to Satisfy passport rule means a buyer asking for a different scheme has to accept yours, often for a small admin fee. Common Assessment Standard (CHAS Elite or Worksafe Pro) is only formally required on public-sector projects above £5 million.
- BSI withdrew PAS 91 in April 2023. The Standard Selection Questionnaire under PPN 03/23 is the main replacement for most public-sector cleaning and FM tenders. For high-value construction-adjacent work over £5 million, PPN 03/24 introduced the Common Assessment Standard from 27 June 2024. Some councils still attach old PAS 91 forms to packs because their templates haven't been refreshed. Read the cover letter and answer the version they actually ask for.
- Six weeks at the fast end of an Open procedure, six months at the slow end of a Competitive Flexible procedure with a pre-qualification stage and negotiation. Add another 4 to 8 weeks for mobilisation before the first invoice. Build that 8 to 12-month cash gap into your bid pricing or you'll win contracts you can't afford to start.