Security Tenders: How to Find, Bid and Win UK Contracts (2026)

A security tender is a public invitation to bid for a manned guarding, mobile patrol, CCTV monitoring, key-holding or event-security contract. UK buyers publish them free on six routes: Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI and individual buyer 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.

That removes the biggest myth in this market: that finding security tenders needs a paid subscription. It does not. Access is free everywhere. The real problems are volume, scatter across councils, NHS, MoD, transport and retail buyers, and the SIA ACS gate that auto-fails a bid before anyone reads the method statement.

This is the discovery hub. When you are ready to write, the full playbooks are how to bid for security contracts in the UK (the process, stage by stage) and how to win security tenders (the scoring). If your last bid came back unsuccessful, why security tender bids fail covers the recurring reasons before you write the next one.

What's in this guide¶

• How to find and win a UK security tender, step by step
• Where UK security tenders are published (and the 2026 thresholds)
• Free security tender alerts: setup on every official portal
• Who buys security and what the contracts are worth
• SIA ACS and BS 7858: the gate before the quality score
• The under-£30k work that never reaches a portal
• From found to won: the condensed bid path
• FAQs

How to win a UK security tender, step by step¶

The complete end-to-end flow inside CleanTender. From sector setup to a submitted security bid in the time it used to take to read a single tender pack.

Where UK security tenders are published right now¶

Six routes carry the whole public market. Which portal a tender lands on depends on two things: the buyer's nation and the contract's value against the Procurement Act 2023 thresholds.

• Find a Tender (find-tender.service.gov.uk). The UK-wide home of above-threshold contracts. From 1 January 2026 that means £207,720+ (inc VAT) for councils, NHS trusts and housing associations, and £135,018+ for central government and MoD, per PPN 023. Multi-site estate guarding, NHS trust-wide security, framework competitions.
• Contracts Finder (contractsfinder.service.gov.uk). England's below-threshold noticeboard. Central-government contracts from £12,000 (inc VAT) and council / NHS notifiable contracts from £30,000 (inc VAT). Most SME-sized guarding, patrol and key-holding tenders live here.
• Public Contracts Scotland (publiccontractsscotland.gov.uk). All Scottish public buyers. Free supplier registration.
• Sell2Wales (sell2wales.gov.wales). All Welsh public buyers. Free supplier registration.
• eTendersNI (etendersni.gov.uk). Northern Ireland's portal. Free registration; you need a free D-U-N-S number to sign up.
• The Defence Sourcing Portal (DSP). MoD's own e-sourcing system for below-threshold defence opportunities, roughly from £10,000. Above-threshold MoD work still routes through Find a Tender. Register separately; DSP is not Contracts Finder.

One warning on the thresholds, and it applies to this site as much as anyone else's. The old central-government figure of £139,688 died on 31 December 2025. If a tender-portal marketing page (ours included, in one older article we are correcting) still quotes £139,688 or a £25,000 Contracts Finder floor in 2026, the content is stale. The current figures are £135,018 / £207,720 for Find a Tender and £12,000 / £30,000 for below-threshold notices, all inc VAT.

Free security tender alerts¶

Every official UK portal sends free email alerts. Paid resellers charge for repackaging this data with a nicer interface. If you bid fewer than 20 tenders a year, that money buys you nothing you cannot get below in under an hour of setup.

Contracts Finder alerts (England, below threshold)

1. Go to contractsfinder.service.gov.uk and create a free account. Searching needs no login, but saved searches and email updates do.
2. Search security, or search by CPV code 79710000 (security services). CPV is the buyer's own classification, so it catches notices whose titles never say "security" ("soft FM services, Lot 3").
3. Add the narrower codes that match your work: 79711000 alarm monitoring, 79713000 guard services, 79714000 surveillance, 79715000 patrol services.
4. If event or festival security is part of your book, add 79952000 (event services) as a separate saved search. It catches notices the security-only codes miss.
5. Filter to your regions and to open-deadline notices.
6. Save the search, then switch on email updates in your account settings.
7. Repeat for each region and code combination you cover. Contracts Finder alerts are literal: one saved search per variation.

That last code earns its place. The 2025 Radio 1 Big Weekend event stewarding and security contract awarded by Liverpool City Council was classified under CPV 79952000, not the security head code. A saved search on 79710000 alone would have missed it.

Find a Tender alerts (UK-wide, above threshold)

Create a free GOV.UK One Login account on find-tender.service.gov.uk, run your security search, save the search criteria, and sign up for email notifications. Same CPV codes apply. Above-threshold contracts are bigger and slower, so a weekly check plus the alert is enough.

Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and MoD

• Public Contracts Scotland. Register free as a supplier, then build an Alert Profile from commodity categories, keywords, CPV codes and geographic areas. The Notice Alert Service emails you every match.
• Sell2Wales. Register free, then set your Alerts Profile (product categories plus locations) in the Supplier Control Panel. You get a daily email listing matching opportunities.
• eTendersNI. Register free (grab a free D-U-N-S number first), then save your chosen CPV codes to your profile under EO administration. Matching notices arrive by email.
• Defence Sourcing Portal. MoD's own registration. Below-threshold defence security opportunities (guarding, patrol, key holding on defence estates) publish here, separately from Contracts Finder.

The catch with portal alerts, and the fix

Six separate portals means six separate alert streams, six sets of saved searches to maintain, and zero judgement. The portals tell you a tender exists. They do not tell you whether you can win it. A multi-site NHS trust guarding contract and a single-building key-holding job arrive in your inbox looking identical, and neither one tells you whether your ACS status even qualifies you to bid.

CleanTender's free tier does the merge for you: every UK security tender from all of the sources above in one feed, scored against your company profile (including your ACS and BS 7858 status) so the ones you can actually win rise to the top. The official portals stay free either way. What you are buying back is the daily half hour and the misjudged bids.

Who buys security, and what the contracts are worth¶

Five buyer types publish nearly all UK public security tenders: councils, NHS trusts, MoD and defence estates, transport (Network Rail, TfL and equivalents), and retail, events or housing associations. Each wants a different flavour of security work, from manned guarding to CCTV monitoring to void-property key holding, and the values swing hard depending on which one it is.

Two months. £63,034.20. Radio 1 Big Weekend. That is what Liverpool City Council paid Compact Security Services for event stewarding and security in 2025, classified under CPV 79952000. Bristol City Council awarded £375,000 to Amulet Security (then trading as Churchill Security Solutions) for manned guarding, cash and valuables in transit, and mobile patrol and response, a seven-month contract under CPV 79710000. That Bristol award is from 2019, not current, so treat it as a value reference rather than a recent example. It still tells you something useful: manned guarding contracts at this scale have sat in the low-to-mid six figures for years, and that has not moved much.

Retail and events buyers need one caveat. Stewarding-only roles at events, directing people to seats, toilets or first aid, do not require an SIA licence. Licensed security roles on the same site (bag searches, crowd control at pinch points, ejections) do. A single event-security tender can bundle both, so read the specification closely before you assume every headcount needs a licence.

Housing associations are a market most security firms underrate. Void-property security, patrol and key holding sits inside wider works frameworks as often as it sits in a standalone security tender, so it will not always show up on a CPV-only search. Worth a manual scan of housing association procurement portals if that is your niche.

The buyer-by-buyer detail (what each SQ actually asks for, scoring weightings, framework routes) lives in how to bid for security contracts in the UK.

SIA ACS and BS 7858: the gate before the quality score¶

SIA ACS (Approved Contractor Scheme) is voluntary under the Private Security Industry Act 2001. On UK public-sector security tenders it functions as a hard gate anyway. Council, NHS and MoD selection questionnaires, plus Crown Commercial Service frameworks, specify ACS by name. Miss it and the bid fails at qualification before anyone reads the method statement.

BS 7858:2019 sits alongside ACS and covers something different. ACS audits the company. BS 7858 vets the individual, five-year employment history, character references, identity checks, right-to-work confirmation, and a criminal record check for every guard, patroller or CCTV operator deployed on the contract. Most council and NHS tenders ask for both, named separately in the SQ.

There is over 500,000 SIA-licensed operatives in the UK at any given time and several hundred companies on the ACS register, per the SIA's 2024-25 annual reporting. That is a lot of competition holding the same baseline paperwork. ACS and BS 7858 get you into the room. They do not win the bid on their own.

Not live yet. Worth tracking anyway: Martyn's Law, the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025. Royal Assent landed 3 April 2025, and statutory guidance published in April 2026 confirmed two tiers, a standard tier for venues with 200-799 capacity and an enhanced tier for 800+. Government has said enforcement starts at least 24 months after Royal Assent, so no earlier than April 2027, without yet naming the exact date. Bid on transport, retail or event-security work and it is worth naming ACT (Action Counters Terrorism) awareness training in your method statement now. Buyers are already asking about it ahead of the law actually biting.

For the full accreditation timeline, cost and application process, the SIA ACS guide covers the five audit areas, the assessing bodies, and when applying is not worth it.

The under-£30k work that never reaches a portal¶

Below the £30,000 notice floor (councils and NHS trusts) or £12,000 (central government), buyers do not have to advertise at all. Most councils' contract standing orders require three written quotes for this band instead. The buyer emails three firms it already knows. Two quote. One wins. The contract never touches Contracts Finder.

In security this band is bigger than most people assume: single-site key holding, out-of-hours alarm response, a void property patrol contract for a small housing scheme, weekend event stewarding for a village fete. Individually small. Collectively, the fastest route to public-sector references for a firm with none, and a genuine on-ramp before you carry the cost of ACS.

Getting onto the quote list takes no portal. Email the facilities or estates contact at every council, NHS trust and housing association within your patch. One page: who you are, your SIA licence coverage, your patch, two references. Ask to be added to the supplier list for security quotes under £30k. Ten minutes per buyer. Most of your competitors never send it.

From found to won: the condensed bid path¶

The walkthrough above is the full flow. In compressed form, a security bid has five gates.

1. Qualify before you write. ACS status, BS 7858 vetting coverage, licensed operative headcount against the contract's shift pattern, insurance level, implied margin. Fail any gate, no-bid and move on.
2. Pass the Selection Questionnaire. ACS reference number, insurance certificates, accounts, references. This stage is binary; missing paperwork auto-fails.
3. Write the method statement to the scoring guide. Deployment plan, supervision structure, named SIA licence categories per role, BS 7858 vetting process, incident-reporting procedure. Named beats generic on every criterion.
4. Price from the wage floor up. Labour is the cost. Build from 2026 SIA-sector wage rates through NI, pension, holiday, uniform, equipment and supervision to your rate. Backwards-priced bids win contracts and lose money on unsociable-hours cover.
5. Add quantified social value. Local recruitment, apprenticeships through SIA licence sponsorship, community safety hours, with numbers attached. Public buyers commonly weight this 10-20% of the total score.

Each gate has its own full guide: the security bid process stage by stage, what evaluators score and how to beat it, and if you have already lost a security bid and want to know why, why security tender bids fail runs through the recurring reasons before you write the next one.

Sources¶