What is Find a Tender? A plain-English guide for UK suppliers

Find a Tender(the Find a Tender Service, at find-tender.service.gov.uk) is the UK government's official portal where public buyers — central government departments, local councils, NHS trusts, schools, housing associations and other contracting authorities — publish their tender notices and contract award notices. Under the Procurement Act 2023, it is the central place where regulated UK public procurement is advertised. If you want to sell to the UK public sector, Find a Tender is where the opportunities appear — and using it is completely free.

What changed with the Procurement Act 2023

The Procurement Act 2023 replaced the previous EU-derived procurement rules and pushed the whole notice lifecycle through one central platform. In practical terms for suppliers, that means more of the process is public and in one place: pipeline and planned procurement notices before a tender goes live, the tender notice itself with its submission deadline, and the award notice afterwards — including who won and for how much. The Act also requires buyers to have regard to the barriers facing small businesses, which is why many notices now carry explicit SME and VCSE (voluntary, community and social enterprise) suitability flags.

What are CPV codes?

Every notice is classified with CPV codes (Common Procurement Vocabulary): 8-digit codes that describe what is being bought. The first two digits are the division — the broad sector. For example, division 45 is construction work, 72 is IT services and 79 is business services. CPV codes matter because they are the most reliable way to filter tenders: keywords miss notices worded differently, but a buyer buying software will classify the notice under the software CPV codes regardless of how the title is phrased.

How to get started — for free

1. Make sure your company details at Companies House are current. Your Company Number (8 characters, e.g. 02093728 or SC123456) is how buyers and databases identify your business.
2. Register as a supplier on the government's procurement platform — registration is free and you only need to do it once to bid on regulated procurements.
3. Identify the CPV divisions that describe what you sell, and the regions you can serve.
4. Watch for the submission deadline on every tender notice — it is the single most important field. Questions to the buyer usually close well before it.

One warning that will save you real money: viewing notices, registering and bidding through Find a Tender costs nothing. Paid services (ours included) can save you time or add intelligence on top of the public data — but nobody can sell you "access" to UK public tenders, because access is free by law. Know exactly what you are paying for: convenience and insight, not entry.

What about smaller contracts?

Find a Tender carries the regulated, higher-value procurements. Lower-value opportunities in England are advertised on Contracts Finder, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also operate national portals (Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, eTendersNI). If you are starting out, below-threshold contracts are often the easier first win — but the award data that tells you what buyers actually pay is richest on Find a Tender.

Registered — now what?

Knowing where tenders live doesn't build you a pipeline. Hundreds of notices are published every week, each with a CPV code, a region and a submission deadline. The next step is working the data: search public contracts and company histories on GovTenderIQ to see what buyers actually purchase in your sector — and at what value — and set up alerts that match your CPV sectors so relevant tenders reach you before the deadline does.