How to find council tenders in the UK

Where councils have to publish their tenders

Since 24 February 2025 the Procurement Act 2023 sets the rules for councils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland has its own rules, below). In plain English:

• Bigger contracts go on Find a Tender. From 1 January 2026 a council contract for goods or services worth £207,720 or more (including VAT), or works worth £5,193,000 or more, must be advertised on Find a Tender, the government's central digital platform. Central government's threshold is lower, £135,018.
• Smaller contracts go there too, from £30,000. If a council advertises a contract worth £30,000 or more (including VAT) at all, it must publish a below-threshold tender notice on the same platform first. Below £30,000 a council can simply ask a few firms to quote, and often does: those jobs never appear on any national site, which is why being known to your local council matters.
• Contracts Finder is fading but not gone. It was the home of below-threshold notices before February 2025, and some councils still publish there. Today 19 open council tenders are on Contracts Finder and nowhere else.
• Scotland uses Public Contracts Scotland. Scottish councils advertise on PCS, including small quick quotes that never reach Find a Tender. Today 27 open Scottish council tenders are on PCS only. Welsh councils use Sell2Wales as well as Find a Tender; Northern Ireland's use eTendersNI.
• The documents are usually somewhere else. The notice tells you about the contract; the tender pack (specification, questions, pricing schedule) sits on the council's e-tendering portal, run by a handful of suppliers (Proactis and ProContract, In-Tend, Delta, Jaggaer, Atamis). Registering is free, and councils in one area often share a portal, so one registration covers several. Each tender page on this site says where that tender's documents are.

Thresholds from the Cabinet Office's Procurement Policy Note 023 (November 2025) and the Act's below-threshold guidance. They change every two years; check GOV.UK before relying on them.

Five ways to find council tenders

1. Free alerts from Find a Tender. Make an account, save a search (keywords, a region, a value range) and it emails you new notices that match. It's free and complete for everything above £30,000 in England. The catch is noise: a keyword like "survey" brings every notice that mentions one, and you still read each to see if it's your work, your area and a size you could win.
2. Register on the portals your councils use. Look up "selling to the council" on each council's website: it names the portal and often lists coming contracts. Set up alerts there too, because that's where the under-£30,000 quotes and the documents live.
3. Read the early notices. Councils publish pipeline and market-engagement notices months before a tender: who's buying what, roughly when, and sometimes an invitation to a supplier day. There are 870 of these from councils open right now; they're listed under "Coming up" on each sector page here. Turning up early is how small firms shape a tender into lots they can bid for.
4. Watch contracts that are ending. When a council's cleaning, maintenance, training or consultancy contract ends, it's usually tendered again. Award notices state the end date, so you can see a re-tender coming a year out. Today 865 council service contracts end in the next 3 to 12 months, 555 of them held by a small or medium-sized firm: see contracts up for renewal. Councils also publish contract registers listing every current contract and its end date.
5. Frameworks and dynamic markets. Many council jobs are called off from a framework or a dynamic market rather than tendered one by one. Getting a place is a tender in itself, often with lots by area and trade; a place guarantees nothing, but without one you can't be asked. The notice says which it is, and this site says so in plain words on each tender.

Or let something read the notices for you. Winnable reads every new notice every weekday morning and emails you the few that fit what you do, where you work and the sizes you want, each with the catch spelled out. Here's what a morning's email looks like.

Which councils are tendering most right now

Counted this morning from Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and Public Contracts Scotland. Each council's page lists its open tenders, the contracts it has ending soon and who won its recent work.

Every public sector buyer with open tenders →

What councils are buying

Open council tenders today by kind of work. Each link shows the tenders, the contracts ending soon and the early notices for that trade.

• Health & social care: 149 open
• Construction & civil works: 144 open
• Building maintenance & repairs: 81 open
• Architecture, engineering & surveying: 70 open
• Consultancy & research: 40 open
• Training & education: 38 open
• Vehicles & fleet: 34 open
• IT & software: 32 open

Four things small firms should know before bidding

• Most council contracts are small. Of today's 639 open council tenders with a stated value, 333 are under £500,000. A two- or three-person firm wins this kind of work every week; the small-firm share by contract size is in our quarterly small-firm tender report.
• Read the stated requirements before anything else. A tender can ask for three years' accounts, a turnover of twice the contract value, a specific accreditation or a local depot. Those lines decide whether you can win before you write a word. Every tender on this site quotes them as "the catch".
• Thirty-day payment is the law. Public contracts under the Procurement Act must pay undisputed invoices within 30 days, and that term passes down to subcontractors.
• Lots are your friend. Councils often split a contract into lots by area or trade so small firms can bid for part of it. The notice says how many lots there are and whether you can bid for one.

Winnable is independent and not part of or endorsed by the UK government or any council. Always read the official notice before you bid.