Find a Tender & Contracts Finder: A Care Provider's Guide

If you deliver domiciliary care, supported living, children’s services, or patient transport, the tenders you want are sitting on two government portals right now. The problem is that most providers either don’t know both platforms exist, or they search once, find nothing relevant, and never come back.

This guide walks you through both portals from registration to saved alerts — with the specific filters, CPV codes, and search tactics that matter for care providers.

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Two portals, two thresholds

The UK publishes public sector contracts across two main platforms. Which one you need depends on contract value.

	Find a Tender	Contracts Finder
Threshold	Above-threshold contracts (check current threshold on gov.uk — it changes periodically)	Below-threshold contracts, plus voluntary above-threshold publications
Who publishes	Central government, NHS trusts, large local authority frameworks	Local authorities, smaller NHS bodies, housing associations (some voluntarily)
Typical care contracts	National frameworks, large regional domiciliary care lots, NHS Continuing Healthcare	Single-borough domiciliary care, supported living spot purchases, children’s residential placements
Notice types	Contract notices, prior information notices (PINs), dynamic purchasing system (DPS) notices	Open opportunities, closed opportunities, pipeline notices
URL	find-tender.service.gov.uk	contractsfinder.service.gov.uk

In practice, many care contracts appear on Contracts Finder because local authority commissioning teams publish below-threshold opportunities there as a matter of policy. But the larger framework agreements and DPS setups — the ones worth tens of millions across multiple lots — tend to land on Find a Tender first.

You need to be monitoring both.

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Registration basics

Find a Tender

1. Go to find-tender.service.gov.uk and click Create an account.
2. You’ll need a valid email address and your organisation’s basic details. There’s no company verification step — you can register and start searching immediately.
3. Once registered, you can save searches and receive email alerts.

Contracts Finder

1. Go to contractsfinder.service.gov.uk.
2. You can search without an account, but to set up alerts and save searches you’ll need to register.
3. The exact registration steps can change, so treat the account setup as an administrative task rather than a barrier. The key point is that your team can save searches and receive alerts from a shared inbox.

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Search filters that actually matter for care

Both portals let you search by keyword, but keywords alone will bury you in irrelevant results. Here’s how to narrow down effectively.

CPV codes

CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) codes are the classification system used across UK public procurement. For care providers, these are the codes you should know:

• 85000000 — Health and social work services (broad parent category)
• 85310000 — Social work services (covers most domiciliary care and supported living)
• 85311000 — Social work services with accommodation (residential care, supported living with housing)
• 85311100 — Welfare services for the elderly
• 85311300 — Welfare services for children and young people
• 85312000 — Social work services without accommodation (domiciliary care, outreach)
• 85143000 — Ambulance services (patient transport)
• 85140000 — Miscellaneous health services (sometimes used for complex care packages)

On Find a Tender, you can enter CPV codes directly in the advanced search. On Contracts Finder, CPV filtering is available but less prominent — you’ll often get better results combining a keyword search with the “Category” dropdown.

Keywords that work

Generic terms like “care” return thousands of results including building maintenance contracts (“care and repair”) and IT service desk notices. Be specific:

• “domiciliary care” or “home care”
• “supported living”
• “children’s residential”
• “patient transport” or “non-emergency patient transport”
• “learning disability” or “learning disabilities”
• “reablement”
• “continuing healthcare” or “CHC”
• “dynamic purchasing system” combined with one of the above

Location filters

Both portals allow geographic filtering. On Find a Tender, use the location and authority filters available in the current interface rather than relying on legacy code systems from older procurement guidance. On Contracts Finder, you can filter by region or search for the commissioning authority name directly.

Example: To find domiciliary care opportunities in the West Midlands on Contracts Finder, search for “domiciliary care”, set the location to “West Midlands”, and filter to “Open” opportunities only.

Notice type

Not every listing is an invitation to bid right now. Filter by notice type to manage your time:

• Contract notices (Find a Tender) / Open opportunities (Contracts Finder) — these are live, and you can bid now.
• Prior Information Notices (PINs) — the authority is signalling an upcoming procurement. Don’t ignore these (more on this below).
• DPS notices — dynamic purchasing systems that accept new suppliers on a rolling basis.

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Setting up saved searches and email alerts

Searching manually every week is not sustainable. Both portals offer saved search functionality — use it.

On Find a Tender

1. Run your search with filters applied (e.g. CPV 85310000, region UKG3, contract notices only).
2. Click Save search and give it a descriptive name (e.g. “Social work services — West Midlands”).
3. Set the email alert frequency. Daily is recommended for active bidders; weekly is the minimum.

On Contracts Finder

1. Run your filtered search.
2. Click Follow this search (you must be logged in).
3. Alerts are sent by email. You can manage frequency in your account settings.

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What to check before downloading a full tender pack

An alert hits your inbox. Before you invest hours reading a 200-page ITT, run through this quick qualification checklist:

1. Contract value — Is it in your range? A £50 million framework sounds exciting until you realise you need £10 million turnover to qualify. Check the estimated value or, for frameworks, the individual lot values.

2. Geography — Does the delivery area match where you operate or could realistically expand to? A national framework split into regional lots might have one lot covering your area.

3. Lot structure — Many care frameworks are split into lots by service type (e.g. Lot 1: domiciliary care for older adults, Lot 2: supported living for learning disabilities, Lot 3: children’s services). You don’t have to bid for every lot. Identify which lots align with your capability and CQC registration.

4. Timeline — When is the submission deadline? If it’s in five days and you haven’t started, that’s probably a no unless it’s a DPS application (which are typically simpler). Check the contract start date too — a six-month lead time gives you room to mobilise.

5. Selection criteria — Glance at the minimum requirements. Common disqualifiers include minimum turnover thresholds, specific insurance levels, and mandatory accreditations (e.g. ISO 9001, Cyber Essentials). If you’re unsure how terminology maps to requirements, our tender terminology glossary breaks down the jargon.

6. Evaluation weighting — If quality is weighted at 70% and price at 30%, the authority is looking for a strong method statement. If price dominates, you need to be competitive on cost. This tells you where to invest your bid-writing time.

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Common mistakes when reading listings

Ignoring subcontracting opportunities

Not every opportunity requires you to be the prime contractor. Many large framework holders subcontract delivery to smaller, local providers. When you see a framework award notice, note the winning bidders — they may need delivery partners in your area. This is especially common in patient transport and domiciliary care.

Skipping Prior Information Notices

PINs are advance warnings of upcoming procurements. Many providers dismiss them because there’s nothing to bid on yet. That’s exactly why they’re valuable: a PIN gives you time to prepare your evidence library, check your accreditations, and plan capacity. When a council publishes a PIN for a supported living framework in Q3, the providers who prepared in Q2 write stronger bids.

Missing DPS opportunities

A Dynamic Purchasing System is often open to new applicants, but the practical join process still varies by authority and portal. If you see a DPS listing that looks inactive or unclear, check the underlying documents and portal instructions rather than assuming it is closed for good. Set a reminder to revisit anything that looks strategically important.

Searching only one portal

In practice, authorities often use both the national portals and their own e-tendering systems for document access, clarifications, and submissions. Always check both national portals and, where possible, register on the e-tendering platforms used by your target local authorities.

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Building a sustainable pipeline

Finding tenders is only useful if you can track what you’ve found and act on it consistently. Each time an alert comes in, log the opportunity with the contract title, portal, deadline, estimated value, and your go/no-go decision. A simple pipeline tracker gives you a single view of upcoming deadlines and helps you spot patterns in commissioning cycles.

Over time, you’ll notice that certain authorities re-tender on predictable schedules. A council that published a domiciliary care framework in 2024 will likely re-procure in 2028. A DPS that refreshes every April gives you a recurring annual window. Logging this data turns reactive searching into proactive planning.

If you’re finding opportunities but struggling to convert them into bids — or you’re spending hours on portal searches and still missing relevant tenders — structured tender finding support can close the gap. We monitor both portals daily for care-sector clients and deliver qualified opportunities matched to your service lines, geography, and capacity.

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