New to public sector procurement? Here’s how it works

The UK public sector spends around £400bn a year on goods, services and works, according to the government's own Framework Practice Guide. That spend isn't one customer. It's thousands of separate organisations, each with its own budget, priorities and procurement team.

Procurement law calls these organisations contracting authorities, meaning the public bodies that have to follow the rules when they buy. They include:

• Central government: departments, their executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies.
• Health: the NHS and its trusts.
• Local government: councils across the country.
• Education: universities and schools.
• Emergency services: police and fire.
• Housing and utilities: social housing organisations and utility companies.

Some buy directly. Many buy through organisations that run procurement on others' behalf, known as centralised procurement authorities. The largest is the Government Commercial Agency (GCA), which replaced the Crown Commercial Service in April 2026. Others include ESPO, YPO and NEPO.

Since 24 February 2025, new procurements have been run under the Procurement Act 2023, the law that replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The Act was designed to make bidding simpler, particularly for small businesses, start-ups and social enterprises.

The old rules haven't vanished, though. Anything started before that date, including frameworks set up under the old regulations, carries on under them until it expires. If a buyer calls off from a framework created in January 2025, that call-off follows the old rules even though the Act is live. For several years you'll meet both rulebooks, sometimes in the same week.

The thresholds that decide which rules apply

The full rules of the Act apply once a contract's estimated value reaches a threshold. Thresholds include VAT, and the current figures took effect on 1 January 2026.

Below these figures, lighter rules apply. If a buyer advertises a contract worth £12,000 or more (central government) or £30,000 or more (other public bodies), it must publish a notice on Find a Tender first. It also can't shortlist suppliers on their suitability before inviting bids. That matters if you're small: below threshold, you can't be screened out at a pre-qualification stage.

Thresholds are revised every two years to track currency movements. Today's figures run until 31 December 2027.

Find a Tender, the central digital platform

Buyers publish their notices on Find a Tender, the government's central digital platform. It's free to use, and you shouldn't pay anyone just to see public sector opportunities.

You register once and receive a unique supplier identifier that follows you from bid to bid. To bid for a contract above threshold, you also complete a supplier information section: your Companies House number, contact details, your last two years of accounts, anyone with significant control over the business, and any relevant convictions.

Since 1 April 2026, registration matters even for small contracts. If you win a notifiable below-threshold contract, the buyer has to publish your identifier, so you need one before the award notice goes out. The basic registration takes about five minutes, which makes it the easiest first step on this page.

Pipeline notices: the earliest public signal

Large buyers, those expecting to spend more than £100m in a financial year, must publish a pipeline notice for each opportunity worth more than £2m that they expect to tender in the next 18 months. These go up within 56 days of 1 April, so late May is when each year's pipelines land.

Think of pipeline notices as a departures board. Not every train leaves on time, and buyers aren't bound by what they publish, but you can see what's coming and where it's heading.

Many buyers also talk to the market before they write a tender, to test what suppliers can deliver. The Act calls this preliminary market engagement. If the tender notice is the first you hear of a procurement, you've usually missed the point at which you could have shaped it.

Our Framework Pipeline Report tells you which upcoming frameworks to apply for, so you can plan around them rather than react to them.

There's no single front door. Most public sector work reaches suppliers through one of five routes, and the right one depends on what you sell, who buys it and what each contract is worth.

Tenders run by the buyer

For a one-off contract, the buyer runs its own competition. The Act gives buyers two competitive procedures. The open procedure is a single-stage tender anyone can respond to. The competitive flexible procedure lets the buyer design its own stages, including negotiation, so expect it to look different from one buyer to the next.

Frameworks

A framework is an agreement between one or more public bodies and a set of approved suppliers. It sets out how future contracts, called call-offs, will be awarded and on what terms. Frameworks are usually split into lots, groups of similar services, so specialists can bid for just the part they're good at.

Getting onto a framework is like getting onto a venue's approved supplier list. It doesn't book you a single event. It means you're allowed to quote when one comes up, and the buyer can skip the vetting it would otherwise have to do.

Under the Act:

• Standard frameworks run for up to four years, or eight for defence and utilities. Nobody new can join during the term.
• Open frameworks can run for up to eight years and reopen at set points so new suppliers can join. Government guidance names technology and digital services as the kind of fast-moving market they suit.
• Call-offs are awarded either through a competition between the framework's suppliers, often called a mini-competition or further competition, or without one where the framework's own rules allow it.

Two things new suppliers rarely hear early enough. First, a place on a framework is permission to compete, not a pipeline of work. Second, most framework providers charge a fee on the work you win through them. Government guidance puts it typically below 1% with national providers and up to 5% or 6% elsewhere. It's stated in the framework documents, so check it before you price.

You can see the frameworks we track, and where each one stands, on our frameworks index.

Dynamic markets

A dynamic market is a list of qualified suppliers, those who've met its conditions for membership, who can then compete for contracts awarded through it. Dynamic markets replace dynamic purchasing systems (DPS) under the Act. Any DPS set up under the old rules ends on 23 February 2029.

Direct award

In limited circumstances set out in the Act, a buyer can award a contract without a competition. It has to publish a transparency notice when it does, so these awards are visible even when you can't bid for them.

Smaller contracts below threshold

Lower-value contracts carry lighter rules, as described above. They can be a sensible place to build the track record that larger tenders ask for.

Which route fits you? If you're not sure whether you're ready for a framework, Framework Readiness Review tells you before you commit. When you are, our framework listing services do the applying.

Every competitive procurement follows the same basic logic, even when the format differs.

1. Conditions of participation. The buyer checks you can deliver: financial standing, relevant experience and any certifications the contract needs. Some of these are pass or fail.
2. Exclusion checks. Buyers check suppliers against the grounds for exclusion and the central debarment list.
3. Award criteria. Your tender is scored against criteria the buyer publishes in advance. That's usually a mix of quality and price and, for many central government contracts, social value.
4. Feedback. Buyers have to give bidders an assessment of their final tender, so you can see where marks were won and lost.

Evaluators score what's in front of them, against a published scheme, often knowing nothing about your company. A capable supplier with a weak answer scores like a weak supplier. Across frameworks other than G-Cloud, the applications we support average a 97% quality score.

Some requirements are checked before anyone reads your answers. Miss one and the rest of your bid may never be scored. These four are worth having in hand early, because none of them can be produced the week a tender lands.

A social value approach

Social value is the wider benefit you deliver through a contract, beyond the service itself. For central government, a new model set out in PPN 026 (a Procurement Policy Note, the government's formal guidance to buyers) applies to procurements worth £1m or more, including VAT, that start on or after 1 January 2027. It focuses on good jobs and skills, and sets a minimum weighting:

• at least 10% of the total score for contracts from £1m to under £5m
• at least 20% for contracts of £5m or more

Contracts of £5m or more also carry at least one social value KPI. Poor delivery against those KPIs can be taken into account when a buyer decides whether to exclude a supplier from future tenders. Procurements that start before 1 January 2027 may still use the previous model, so read each tender's criteria closely. Other public bodies can choose to adopt the same approach.

Our social value strategy work builds your approach before you need it. For the writing itself, see how to write a social value response that scores well.

A Carbon Reduction Plan

Under PPN 006, central government buyers ask for a Carbon Reduction Plan on contracts worth more than £5m a year, including VAT. It's a condition of participation, follows the government's template and commits your business to net zero. If a contract in your sights is that size, the plan needs to be in place before you bid, not drafted during it. See Carbon Reduction Plans.

Cyber Essentials

Cyber Essentials is the government-backed scheme that certifies basic cyber security controls. Under PPN 014, central government departments, their agencies and NHS bodies ask for Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus where a contract involves things like handling personal data or supplying ICT services. For most technology suppliers, it's worth having before you're asked. See Cyber Essentials.

ISO certification

There's no blanket rule requiring ISO certification, but some frameworks and tenders ask for it, or for equivalent evidence, as a condition of participation. Common examples include ISO 9001 for quality management and ISO 27001 for information security. Our breakdown of PSSS ISO requirements shows how this plays out on a live framework. See ISO certification.

We can arrange all four through Advice Cloud, working with specialist partners where certification is involved.

Winning is the start of a public record, not the end of the process.

• You'll be paid on 30-day terms. The Act extends 30-day payment terms across a wider range of public contracts and down the supply chain. Buyers now publish how quickly they actually pay.
• Your performance can become public. On contracts above £5m, buyers set at least three KPIs and publish an assessment of your performance against them at least once every 12 months. Where a supplier breaches a contract, or underperforms and fails to improve, that can be published too.
• Your record follows you. Those notices sit on Find a Tender, where the next buyer can read them.

If you're already listed and the work isn't coming, that's a different problem with different fixes. Start with our G-Cloud Buyability™ reviews or Procurement Plus.

Keep learning: our UK public sector procurement glossary, the Ultimate Guide to Public Sector Bidding and the G-Cloud spend data dashboard.