Getting started: selling to the public sector

The UK public sector spends hundreds of billions of pounds a year with outside suppliers, and a large share of that goes to small and medium-sized firms. None of it is handed out quietly. Public bodies must advertise most of what they buy, run a fair competition, and publish the result. That transparency is the way in: if you know where to look and how the process works, you can compete for work that many firms never see.

One piece of vocabulary before anything else. Buyers tender: they publish an invitation and run the competition. Suppliers bid: they respond to it. This guide is for suppliers.

Who buys

"The public sector" is not one customer. It is thousands of separate buying organisations, each with its own budgets, priorities and paperwork:

• Central government departments and their agencies, from HMRC to the Environment Agency.
• The NHS: trusts, integrated care boards and national bodies, buying everything from clinical equipment to cleaning.
• Local government: county, district, unitary and borough councils, plus combined authorities.
• Education: schools, academy trusts, colleges and universities.
• Emergency services: police forces and fire and rescue services.
• Housing associations and other regulated bodies that follow public procurement rules.

Each of these buys goods (things), services (people and expertise) and works (construction). Whatever you sell, some part of the public sector almost certainly buys it. Councils alone buy thousands of distinct things, from grave digging to cyber security.

Where the opportunities are published

Two websites matter most in England, and both are free:

• Find a Tender (find-tender.service.gov.uk) is the official UK platform for higher-value contracts. Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force it is the central noticeboard for the whole procurement lifecycle: planned procurements, live tenders, awards and contract details.
• Contracts Finder carries lower-value opportunities in England, generally those above about £12,000 for central government and about £30,000 for other bodies such as councils.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own portals: Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI. If you sell across the UK, register on all the ones that cover your patch.

One wrinkle to expect: notices point you to the buyer's own e-procurement portal to download documents and submit a bid. There are many such portals and you will end up registered on several. Tedious, but each registration takes minutes and lasts for years.

Thresholds, in plain terms

Procurement law sets money thresholds that decide how much process a buyer must follow. You do not need to memorise them, but knowing the shape helps you read a notice:

• Above threshold. For goods and services this sits at roughly £140,000 for central government and roughly £215,000 for other bodies such as councils and NHS trusts; for construction works it is about £5.4 million. Above these figures the full rules apply: advertisement on Find a Tender, fixed minimum timescales, published award criteria and a standstill period before the contract is signed. The figures are reviewed every two years, so check GOV.UK for the current ones.
• Below threshold. Smaller contracts still have to be advertised (on Contracts Finder in England, above the £12,000 and £30,000 marks) but the process is lighter and faster, often a single short quotation exercise. These smaller contracts are usually the realistic starting point for a first-time bidder.

Below-threshold work also tends to be decided locally, by people you can actually meet at supplier events and market engagement sessions.

The Procurement Act 2023, in one paragraph

The Procurement Act 2023, in force since February 2025, replaced the old EU-derived regulations for new procurements in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland kept its own rules). For suppliers the practical changes are these: nearly everything now flows through Find a Tender; buyers must publish more at every stage, including their pipelines of planned procurements; awards are made to the "most advantageous tender", which gives buyers explicit room to weigh quality and social value rather than lowest price; unsuccessful bidders receive assessment summaries explaining how they scored; and 30-day payment terms apply down the supply chain. Contracts started under the old rules still run under them, so you will see both regimes referenced for a while yet.

Your first three steps

1. Register and set up alerts. Create free accounts on Find a Tender and Contracts Finder (and the devolved portals if relevant), then save searches for your keywords and region so opportunities come to you by email. Ten minutes now saves a daily trawl later. Our guide to finding tender opportunities covers the search craft in detail.

2. Build your evidence file. Almost every bid asks for the same core information: accounts or turnover figures, insurance certificates, health and safety policy, data protection registration, quality processes, and two or three references or case studies with named outcomes. Gather these into one folder now. Firms that do this respond in days; firms that do not miss deadlines hunting for an insurance certificate.

3. Study what your target buyers already buy. Award notices are public. Search Find a Tender and Contracts Finder for contracts your competitors have won: who bought, what they paid, when it ends. A contract ending next year is a procurement being planned this year. That, plus buyers' published pipelines, tells you where to aim long before a tender appears.

Selling to the public sector rewards patience and preparation more than salesmanship. The rules exist to make competition fair, which means a well-prepared small firm can beat a complacent large one. Start small, bid on contracts you can genuinely deliver, and treat every loss as paid-for market research: the assessment summary tells you exactly what a winning bid looked like.