Public tenders in the United Kingdom

A public tender in the United Kingdom is a competitive procurement run by a contracting authority. For new procurements in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland that started on or after 24 February 2025, the Procurement Act 2023 is the main statute. The Act provides an open procedure and a competitive flexible procedure. The tender notice and the associated tender documents set the conditions of participation, the award criteria, and the deadline.

Procurements that started before 24 February 2025 continue under the earlier regime, including the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Scotland has its own legislation, including the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015 and the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014. Find a Tender states that split on its service page. Read the notice to see which statute applies.

Find a Tender is the central digital platform. Cabinet Office guidance says notices under the Procurement Act 2023 are published at find-tender.service.gov.uk. From 24 February 2025, Find a Tender publishes both above-threshold and below-threshold notices for new UK procurements, except below-threshold notices in Scotland.

• Find a Tender carries the notice. The contracting authority’s own portal still holds the tender documents. Find a Tender says it replaced TED for UK notices on 31 December 2020. A UK notice is not a TED notice.
• Contracts Finder still holds below-threshold contract information for England and other non-devolved territories where the procurement started before 24 February 2025. Find a Tender points to Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, and eSourcing NI and eTendersNI for the other nations’ below-threshold records from that earlier period.
• Above-threshold notices outside Scotland now cover the life cycle from pipeline to termination. For procurements that started earlier, Find a Tender says it published above-threshold notices, usually over £139,688 including VAT.

The Act’s threshold amounts decide when a contract is a covered public contract. Procurement Policy Note 023 sets the amounts for procurements that commence on or after 1 January 2026. Cabinet Office threshold guidance states that those amounts include VAT.

• £135,018 for goods, services, or works supplied to a central government authority where no other row applies.
• £207,720 for goods, services, or works supplied to a sub-central government authority where no other row applies.
• £5,193,000 for a works contract, and the same figure for a concession contract, where no other row applies.
• £663,540 for a light-touch contract that is not in a more specific row. Utilities and defence and security contracts have their own rows, including £415,440 for many goods and services and £5,193,000 for works.

A procurement that started before 1 January 2026 keeps the threshold that applied when it commenced. Below-threshold contracts are still regulated, including rules on barriers to participation and on publishing information, but they are not the full above-threshold procedure. The Procurement Act 2023 and the notice together say which rules apply.

A tender notice and the associated tender documents are the pack: the specification, conditions of participation, award criteria, pricing schedule, and form of tender. Authorities also use supplier information on the central digital platform. Read every amendment. The deadline is the one in the notice.

Section 54 of the Procurement Act 2023 sets minimum tendering periods. The period starts on the day after the authority invites tenders and ends on the day tenders must be submitted. Where tenders are electronic and the notice and associated documents are provided together, the minimum is 25 days. It is 35 days when tenders are not electronic and the documents are not all provided with the notice. Shorter minima, including 10 days, apply in the cases the section lists, such as a qualifying planned procurement notice or a state of urgency. Light-touch contracts have no minimum in that table. The date on the notice is the date the tender has to meet.

English. Tender notices and tender documents in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are in English. A Welsh authority may also publish in Welsh. Scottish notices are in English unless the notice says otherwise.

Submit in the language the tender documents require. A translation that was not filed is not part of the tender.

The United Kingdom is a party to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement. Covered contracts above the thresholds are open to suppliers from GPA parties on the terms of that agreement. The tender documents state the conditions of participation. An account on Find a Tender uses GOV.UK One Login when you need to register a supplier organisation or save a search. The account does not replace those conditions.

Check whether the contract requires UK insurance, a UK presence, or security clearance, and whether an equivalent is accepted. Also check which nation the authority sits in. A Scottish below-threshold notice is not on Find a Tender in the way an English one is. glossary of tender and procurement terms defines the labels the notice will use.

TenderFaro discovery searches UK Find a Tender and TED. A Find a Tender notice can be searched and imported. The tender documents still have to be taken from the contracting authority. TenderFaro does not submit the tender and does not replace Find a Tender or Contracts Finder.

TenderFaro does not award contracts and does not decide legal eligibility. Discovery searches published notices on TED and UK Find a Tender. SAM.gov search is available when a server credential is configured, and the product says so rather than inventing results. Importing a notice stores it for your organisation and does not start an analysis. With the tender documents in hand, TenderFaro helps a team turn them into structured requirements and compare those requirements with company evidence, with the source wording kept next to the finding. Gaps and potential blockers stay visible for a person to review.

A search result is not a tender pack. A watch match is not a recommendation to bid. An evidence comparison is not a compliance ruling. The company makes the decision. Nothing on this site guarantees an award. The product path is in discover tenders, how TenderFaro works, and a sample analysis.