The first time someone tells you to "go for a tender", you nod, smile, and Google it back in the van that night. It feels like everyone else got a manual you missed.
There isn't one. The word covers a few different things, and most of the noise around it is written for procurement people, not service businesses. Here's the short version.
- A tender is a buyer asking suppliers to bid for a contract, on fixed terms, against published criteria.
- UK public-sector tendering now runs under the Procurement Act 2023, which went live on 24 February 2025.
- The two procedures you'll see most often are the Open procedure and the Competitive Flexible procedure.
- Frameworks and Dynamic Markets are pre-qualified pools. Join once. Bid from them again and again.
- Most small firms lose tenders because they chase the wrong ones, not because they wrote a bad bid.
What's in this guide¶
- What a tender actually is
- Why public buyers run them
- The procedures under the Procurement Act 2023
- Where UK tenders are listed
- How to know which ones are worth your time
What a tender actually is¶
A tender is a buyer publishing a need, the rules, and the scoring, then asking suppliers to send a priced bid against those rules. The buyer reads the bids, scores them, and signs a contract with the supplier who scored best.
That's it. The intimidating bit is the paperwork around it, not the idea itself. People say "tender", "RFP", "ITT", "PQQ" and "SQ" and mean roughly the same thing at different stages.
Why public buyers run tenders¶
UK public bodies cannot just call their cousin and hand over a contract. They spend public money and they answer for it. Tendering forces them to publish what they want, treat suppliers fairly, and write down why one bid won.
Three things drive the process. Legal duty under the Procurement Act 2023. Value for money on taxpayer cash. And, since the Social Value Act 2012 and PPN 002, a credit for wider social value, like local jobs or living-wage commitments.
The procedures under the Procurement Act 2023¶
The Procurement Act 2023 went live on 24 February 2025. It replaced the old Public Contracts Regulations 2015 for new procurements. Five named procedures matter. Plus two ways of running long-term arrangements.
| Procedure | What it is | When you'll see it |
|---|---|---|
| Open procedure | Single stage. Any supplier can submit a bid against the published spec. | The default for standard council cleaning, catering, grounds, and office services. |
| Competitive Flexible procedure | Bespoke multi-stage process. Negotiation allowed if the buyer designs it in. | Larger or more bespoke FM bundles. Use is rising as buyers settle into the Act. |
| Direct award | No competition. Allowed only under strict grounds: extreme urgency, protection of life, sole supplier. | Rare. Pandemic-era PPE buying was the headline example. |
| Light touch regime | A flexible regime for certain service categories with their own rules. | Some health, social care, and education services. |
| Frameworks | Pre-qualified pool of suppliers. Closed for a set period. Call-offs or mini-competitions. | Large multi-supplier deals like NHS Shared Business Services frameworks. |
| Dynamic Markets | Always-open pool of qualified suppliers. New entrants can apply any time. | New under the Act. SMEs are pushed towards these. |
What you'll see on Contracts Finder and Find a Tender.
If you run a small services firm, the Open procedure is what you'll see most often on Contracts Finder. Dynamic Markets are the second one to know. They lower the entry bar by letting you register once and stay registered, instead of re-qualifying for every new contract.
Where UK public tenders are listed¶
Two free portals carry the bulk of English public-sector tenders.
- Contracts Finder. Carries central-government work over £12,000 and English local-authority work over £25,000. The home of most school, council and small NHS notices.
- Find a Tender Service. The high-value portal for anything over £139,688 including VAT. Replaced the old EU OJEU notices for the UK.
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland run their own portals. Public Contracts Scotland for Scottish councils and NHS Scotland. Sell2Wales for Welsh public bodies. eTendersNI for Northern Ireland departments and trusts. None of those duplicate to Contracts Finder.
Under the Act there's a single registration on the central digital platform via Find a Tender. You upload your core company info and self-declarations once and re-use them across bids.
How to know which tenders are worth your time¶
Most small firms lose tenders because they bid the wrong ones. Not because they wrote bad answers.
Three quick filters before you read the spec.
- Geography. If the site is more than two hours from your existing patch and you have no local hub, walk.
- Size. If the contract value would more than double your turnover overnight, walk. Public buyers worry about supplier collapse.
- Scope. If the work is bundled with services you don't deliver (security, grounds, hard FM), walk unless you have a serious sub-contracting partner.
If a tender survives those three filters, it's worth a proper read. If it fails any of them, no amount of writing will save it.
Once you've found one worth bidding, the mechanics live in our step-by-step guide to bidding for cleaning contracts. For the pre-qualification questionnaire that sits in front of every public bid, see what replaced PAS 91 in 2023.
One last thing¶
Tenders are a slow business. A council notice published today might not pay until eighteen months from now, after evaluation, mobilisation and the first invoice cycle. Bid the ones that fit your business and ignore the rest.
Sources
- Procurement Act 2023 (legislation.gov.uk) · Live for new procurements from 24 February 2025
- Transforming Public Procurement (Cabinet Office) · Buyer + supplier guidance on the new regime
- Find a Tender Service · Official high-value tenders portal
- Contracts Finder · Lower-value English public-sector tenders
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
- Practically, not much for a UK supplier. "Tender" is the broad UK public-procurement word. "RFP" (Request for Proposal) is more common in private-sector and US procurement. Both mean a buyer asking suppliers to bid against published rules. UK public buyers also use ITT (Invitation to Tender) for the formal bid stage, and SQ (Standard Selection Questionnaire) for the pre-qualification stage that comes first on multi-stage procedures.
- No, but it's close. A framework is a pre-qualified pool of suppliers. The buyer ran a tender once, picked the suppliers who go on the framework, and now awards individual contracts ("call-offs") to those suppliers without running a full new tender each time. Some frameworks award by mini-competition, some by direct call-off. If you're not on the framework, you can't win the call-offs.
- Only under strict rules. The Procurement Act 2023 allows direct award in narrow cases. Extreme urgency, protection of life, sole-supplier situations, or below-threshold contracts where the council's own rules permit it. Most cleaning, FM, catering and grounds contracts above the council's internal threshold have to go through a published procedure. If you suspect a council is breaching this, the Public Procurement Review Service is the official complaints route.
- A Dynamic Market is a new feature under the Procurement Act 2023. It's an always-open pool of qualified suppliers in a sector. You apply once, get accepted, and stay on it. Buyers then run mini-procedures restricted to members of that market. For SMEs, joining the right Dynamic Market is one of the lowest-effort ways to be ready when work appears. Watch Find a Tender for markets in your sector and apply.
- Six weeks at the fast end, six months at the slow end. A simple Open procedure for cleaning might run four weeks of bid window, two weeks of evaluation, then a 10-day standstill before contract signing. A larger Competitive Flexible procedure with a tender pre-qualification stage and negotiation can stretch out for months. Always work to the dates the buyer publishes, not your own assumed timeline.