How to bid for cleaning contracts in the UK public sector

A council cleaning tender lands in your inbox at 6am. You read it standing in your van, smelling bin bags and yesterday's bleach, scrolling through 60 pages of forms before your first job of the day. You feel sick.

You're not stupid. The form is built for procurement teams, not cleaners. Most small firms make the same first mistake here. They start filling it in.

Don't. Read this first.

• Most cleaning firms lose because they bid the wrong tenders, not because they wrote a bad bid. Bin fast.
• Public cleaning tenders live on Contracts Finder (over £12k central government, over £25k for English councils) and Find a Tender (over £139,688). Both are free.
• PAS 91 was withdrawn by BSI in April 2023. Most public buyers now use the Standard Selection Questionnaire (SQ) under PPN 03/23.
• Hold one SSIP accreditation. Under Deem to Satisfy you can passport between CHAS, SMAS, SafeContractor and Constructionline cheaply.
• Social value carries at least 10% of marks under PPN 002. Councils and NHS trusts often run it at 20% or more. Vague answers lose hard here.

What's in this guide¶

• The bid-it-or-bin-it gut check
• Where UK cleaning tenders actually live
• Get the boring paperwork right once
• The Standard Selection Questionnaire (post-PAS 91)
• Pricing without racing to the bottom
• Social value answers that score
• Why your first three bids will lose, and that's fine

The bid-it-or-bin-it gut check¶

Before you read the spec, ask three questions. If any answer is no, bin it.

1. Can I actually deliver this contract? Geography, hours, headcount.
2. Can I afford to start it? Public buyers pay 30 days from invoice at best. Some pay later. You front the wages until then.
3. Have I worked anything like this before? If the buyer wants three NHS references and you've only done offices, walk.

If you can't answer those in two minutes from the cover sheet, the buyer hasn't given you enough to bid on yet. Submit a clarification question and wait.

The fit check matters more than the answers. A perfect bid on the wrong contract still loses.

Where UK cleaning tenders actually live¶

Two free portals carry the bulk of public-sector cleaning work in England.

• Contracts Finder. Anything central government over £12,000 and English local-authority work over £25,000 has to be posted here. Most school and council cleaning sits at this level.
• Find a Tender Service. The high-value portal. Anything over £139,688 including VAT. NHS trust cleaning, large multi-site council estates, central government office contracts.

If you cover Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland you also need the devolved portals. Public Contracts Scotland for Scottish councils and NHS Scotland. Sell2Wales for Welsh public bodies. eTendersNI for Northern Ireland departments and trusts. None of these duplicate to Contracts Finder. If you only watch one site, you miss the other three nations.

Skip the paid aggregators. Trustpilot reviews of Supply2Gov and Constructionline are full of complaints about steep annual price hikes, recurring subscription traps, and pedantic verification that takes 10 to 12 working days. Every public-sector cleaning notice has to appear on the free portals by law. Save the £2,500.

If you want a single feed of every live cleaning tender across all UK portals, browse our directory of public cleaning contracts.

Get the boring paperwork right once¶

Build a compliance pack once, then re-use it for every bid. Almost every public buyer asks for the same documents in slightly different boxes.

• Employer's liability insurance. £10m is standard, and is the legal minimum if you employ anyone.
• Public liability insurance. £5m is a common floor on cleaning tenders. Some NHS and large council contracts ask for £10m.
• One SSIP accreditation. CHAS, SMAS, SafeContractor or Constructionline. You only need one. The Deem to Satisfy rule lets you passport into another scheme if a buyer asks for a different badge.
• Last two years of audited accounts (or your last full year if you're new).
• Health and safety policy, environmental policy, equality and diversity policy. One page each is fine for sub-£100k work.
• Two or three reference contacts who'll answer the phone when a council rings.

PPN 03/24, in force from June 2024, says public buyers should require the Common Assessment Standard for projects over £5 million. That maps to CHAS Elite or Worksafe Pro. For everything below that, an entry-level SSIP membership like CHAS Standard or Worksafe SSIP gets you through the door.

ISO 9001 is nice to have. It's not a deal-breaker on most council cleaning under £100k. NHS work is stricter and BS EN 1276 (bactericidal) and EN 14476 (virucidal) disinfectant evidence is often asked for in product schedules.

The Standard Selection Questionnaire (post-PAS 91)¶

PAS 91 used to be the standard pre-qualification form for FM and cleaning. BSI withdrew it in April 2023.

The replacement for most public-sector cleaning tenders is the Standard Selection Questionnaire (SQ) under PPN 03/23. Same idea, same rough sections: exclusion grounds, financial standing, technical capacity, health and safety, equality, environment. Buyers cannot ask for evidence beyond what the SQ allows at this stage.

Some councils still attach old PAS 91 forms to their tender packs. Buyers are allowed to use it because PAS 91 stays consistent with the procurement regulations. Read the cover sheet. Answer the version they actually ask for, not the one your competitor used last year.

Whatever the form is called, the trick is the same. Answer it once. Save the answers in a single doc, dated. Copy-paste into each new tender and edit only the paragraphs that change per contract. The first SQ takes a weekend. The fifth takes an hour.

If a tender pack still attaches an old PAS 91 form, the form looks the same to fill in but the rules around it have changed. Read our PAS 91 explainer for what BSI's 2023 withdrawal actually changed and how to handle a buyer who hasn't updated their templates.

Pricing without racing to the bottom¶

Most small cleaning firms underprice. They want the win. They cut their margin to nothing. They win, and then they cannot deliver, and the contract ends ugly.

Public buyers run a Most Economically Advantageous Tender model. Quality and price are scored separately. On council cleaning the quality weighting often sits between 40 and 60 percent. The cheapest bid does not always win. It often doesn't.

Three rules for pricing a public-sector cleaning bid:

1. Price what the contract takes, not what you think the cheapest bidder will quote. Cheap and rough loses on quality and never recovers it.
2. Build a real cost stack. Wages at the real living wage minimum, holiday cover, materials, supervisor time, mobilisation, insurance, profit. Show it if the buyer asks.
3. Write your walk-away rate down before you read the spec. Stick to it. The spec will try to talk you out of it.

If you can't deliver the contract at your walk-away rate, you can't deliver the contract. The bid is over before you start it.

Social value answers that score¶

Under PPN 002, in-scope central government cleaning tenders carry a minimum 10% social value weighting. Councils and NHS trusts routinely run it at 20% or higher. Some run it at 30%. Ten marks of waffle costs you the contract.

Most small cleaners write nothing. Or they write three paragraphs of community-engagement boilerplate. Buyers see twenty of those a tender. They mark them down.

Pick two or three TOMs measures you can deliver and put a number on each. Numbers beat slogans every time.

• Hire one person who has been long-term unemployed onto this contract within three months of mobilisation.
• Pay the real Living Wage Foundation rate to every cleaner working on this site, including agency cover.
• Donate one supervisor hour a week to a named local food bank or community group for the contract length.
• Spend at least 30% of consumables budget with SME suppliers within 20 miles of the site.

If you can't put a number on it, don't write it. Buyers score commitments, not intentions.

Why your first three bids will lose¶

Public buyers reward incumbents. Your first bid is up against firms that already work for the council, know the evaluator, and can quote previous contract numbers in their answers. You can't.

Treat the first three bids as paid training. Submit them on time. Get the feedback. Fix the worst answer for next time. The same evaluator will read the next bid you write to that same buyer.

When the buyer offers a debrief, ask for one. Most contractors don't. The debrief tells you which sections lost you marks and exactly how the winning bid framed them. It is the cheapest cleaning-tender education you'll ever buy.

What to actually do this week¶

You don't need a bid writer. You need to bid less and bid better.

Pick one council inside an hour's drive. Set up email alerts on Contracts Finder for cleaning notices in that authority. Watch them for six months. Bid the third or fourth one that matches your scope. That's the formula.