How to Find Public Sector Contracts in the UK

Last reviewed 19 October 2026. General guidance, not legal advice.

Most UK public sector contracts are advertised free of charge on official government websites. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland that is mainly Find a Tender. Scotland uses Public Contracts Scotland, and Wales and Northern Ireland also run their own portals. The skill is not finding notices but spotting the few that fit your firm before the deadline.

Key points

• Find a Tender is the main official source for England, Wales and Northern Ireland under the Procurement Act 2023, including many smaller contracts.
• Contracts Finder still carries notices for procurements run under the old rules, such as call-offs from older frameworks, and its award history is useful.
• Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own portals that you should also watch if you work there.
• Award notices show when current contracts end, which tells you what is coming up.
• Judge each opportunity on location, size, requirements and time to bid before you open the documents.

The official sites

All of these are free to search and free to register on. You should never have to pay to read a public notice.

Since the Procurement Act 2023 took effect on 24 February 2025, buyers in England and Wales that advertise a below-threshold contract must publish the tender notice on the Central Digital Platform (Find a Tender) before anywhere else. This applies from £12,000 including VAT for central government and NHS trusts, and £30,000 including VAT for councils and most other public bodies. Schools and most Northern Ireland public bodies are outside these below-threshold rules.

Buyer portals: where you actually bid

A notice tells you about the opportunity. The tender documents and the bid itself usually sit on the buyer's own e-tendering portal. Common ones include ProContract, In-Tend, Delta eSourcing and Jaggaer, plus regional portals such as the Kent Business Portal.

Register on the portals your local buyers use before you need them. Registration is usually free, but approval can take time, and you do not want to lose part of your bidding time to it.

Frameworks, dynamic markets and subcontracting

Not all work is advertised one contract at a time.

• Frameworks. A buyer, or a purchasing organisation working for many buyers, appoints a list of suppliers and calls off work later. Facilities, repairs and compliance work often runs this way. Getting on a framework is a tender in its own right. Most frameworks can last up to four years, so the chance to join may come round only every few years.
• Dynamic markets (and older dynamic purchasing systems). These stay open to new suppliers who meet the conditions, so you can join part way through.
• Subcontracting. Large contractors on public contracts often subcontract specialist work such as fire alarm servicing, pest control or grounds. Their supply chain teams are worth getting to know, and payment terms of 30 days flow down to you under the Act.

Use award notices to see what is coming

When a contract is awarded, the buyer publishes who won, the value and the contract period. Because most contracts are re-tendered before they end, award notices are an early warning system. If a school cleaning contract ends next August, the replacement will usually be advertised months before.

BidTrowel lists public contracts ending in the next 12 months by trade, with the buyer, current supplier and end date.

How to judge a contract in five minutes

Before you download anything, check five things in the notice:

1. Location. Can you deliver it profitably from where you are? Travel time eats margin on repairs, cleaning and grounds work.
2. Size. Compare the value with your turnover. A contract worth far more each year than your current turnover is a risk for you and the buyer.
3. Requirements. Look for accreditations (such as SSIP schemes, SafeContractor, Constructionline, BAFE or NICEIC), insurance levels, minimum turnover, TUPE and DBS checks. See our guide to health and safety accreditations.
4. Time to bid. Count the working days to the deadline and to the clarification deadline. A good quality bid takes days, not hours.
5. Type of contract. Is it a single contract, a framework place or a lot within a bigger tender? Frameworks do not guarantee work.

If a contract passes those five checks, read the specification and evaluation criteria next. Our guide to writing quality answers covers what comes after.

Set up alerts so you do not miss anything

Find a Tender and Contracts Finder both let you save searches and receive email alerts. They are free and worth setting up. Two tips make them more useful:

• search by CPV code (the category codes buyers use) as well as keywords, because titles are often vague;
• keep keyword searches broad (for example "grounds maintenance" and "landscaping") and filter by location.

The free alerts send everything that matches. If you would rather get a short list scored for your trade, area and size, with requirements flagged, BidTrowel does that. The weekly version is free: get free alerts.

Where to start this week

• Browse open contracts for your trade and note which local buyers come up most often.
• Register on those buyers' portals and on the Central Digital Platform.
• Pick one below-threshold contract near you, where there is usually no pre-qualification stage, and bid for it properly.

Sources

• Find a Tender (checked 19 October 2026)
• Contracts Finder (checked 19 October 2026)
• Public Contracts Scotland (checked 19 October 2026)
• Sell2Wales (checked 19 October 2026)
• eTendersNI (checked 19 October 2026)
• GOV.UK: PPN 019, requirements to publish on Contracts Finder (checked 19 October 2026)
• Cabinet Office: guidance on below-threshold contracts (checked 19 October 2026)