What you need before you bid

The short list

Register on Find a Tender

Tenders in England, Wales and Northern Ireland run under the Procurement Act 2023 use the government's Central Digital Platform, which is Find a Tender. It is free. You register once and complete your core supplier information: basic details about your organisation, your economic and financial standing, any connected persons, and whether any exclusion grounds apply to you. A company gives its legal form and the law it is governed by; a sole trader does not.

When a buyer asks for it, you generate a share code on Find a Tender and give it to the buyer, so you do not retype the same information into every tender. Keep it up to date: the Central Digital Platform factsheet explains how it works. The bidding itself usually still happens on the buyer's own e-tendering system: where tenders are published covers those.

Insurance and accounts: what a buyer cannot demand up front

Two rules in section 22 of the Procurement Act 2023 help small firms directly. A buyer cannot require insurance relating to the contract to be in place before it awards the contract. And it cannot require audited accounts from a supplier that is not legally required to have its accounts audited.

Neither means you can ignore them. You will need the cover once you win, at the levels the buyer sets in the tender documents for that work. Ask your broker now what the levels you typically see would cost and how quickly they could be in place. For accounts, every condition must be proportionate to the contract, and there is no longer a fixed turnover rule: winning your first contract explains the financial standing guidance.

Policies, in your own words

Most tenders ask for health and safety, equality and diversity, environmental and data protection policies, and some ask about safeguarding, business continuity or quality management. A buyer is looking for evidence that you have thought about the risks of this work, so a two-page policy that describes what your business actually does beats a downloaded template. Date each one, name who is responsible, and review them every year.

• Modern slavery. The duty to publish a transparency statement applies at a turnover of £36 million or more (Modern Slavery Act 2015, section 54). Central government and NHS buyers may ask smaller organisations about it only where that is proportionate (PPN 009).
• Cyber Essentials. Central government and NHS bodies must require it, or equivalent controls, for contracts that handle personal information or certain government data and ICT (PPN 014). It is inexpensive and worth having if you handle data at all.
• Carbon reduction plan. Required for central government contracts worth more than £5 million a year including VAT. Below that, an environmental policy and some honest measures are usually enough.
• Quality and other certifications such as ISO 9001 are not legal requirements. Some buyers ask for them on larger or higher-risk contracts; read the conditions of participation before you decide whether it is worth getting one.

Case studies you can adapt

Experience questions are where small firms most often lose marks, usually because the example is vague. Write three or four case studies now, each with the client, the problem, what you did, the result in numbers and a contact who will take a call. Private sector work counts, and a buyer cannot require you to have held a contract with it before. Social value is a section of its own in many tenders: social value for small businesses covers what to write.