Plenty of care providers lose not because their overall score is low, but because one answer fell below the quality threshold and disqualified the whole bid. Understanding how thresholds work is the difference between a near miss and a win.

What a threshold actually is

Many councils set a minimum acceptable score on each scored question, commonly expressed as you must score at least 3 out of 5, or 60 per cent, on every quality answer. Drop below it on a single question and you can be excluded regardless of how well you scored elsewhere. The threshold is a floor, not an average, which is why one weak answer sinks an otherwise strong submission.

Why good providers fall below it

The answers that dip below threshold are rarely the ones providers worry about. They are usually the questions treated as easy: business continuity, complaints handling, equality and diversity, or information governance. Providers pour effort into care delivery and write a thin paragraph on continuity, and that thin paragraph is what fails. Every scored question needs to clear the floor, not just the headline ones.

The pattern in below-threshold answers

Below-threshold answers share features: they restate the question, describe intentions rather than mechanisms, omit named roles and systems, give no timeframes, and offer no example. Evaluators cannot award a passing band to an answer that gives them nothing concrete to credit. They are not being harsh; there is simply nothing there to score.

How to lift every answer over the floor

Treat each scored question, however minor, as if it alone could lose the contract, because it can. For every answer, name who does it, the system or record used, the frequency or timeframe, the relevant standard, and one real example with an outcome. Check the weakest answer in the set, not the strongest, because the weakest is the one carrying your risk.

Read the mark scheme before you write

Where the council publishes the scoring descriptors, they tell you exactly what separates a 3 from a 5. Write to those descriptors directly. Where they are not published, assume the top band needs full coverage, named evidence and outcomes, and write to that standard everywhere.

Clear the threshold every time

A single below-threshold answer wastes the entire bid. We help care providers lift every answer clear of the floor and into the winning band, with a 92% win rate across 200+ submissions, and most of our writers ran care services before they wrote bids. Get a free, honest review of your scored answers.