If you run a care service and want council or NHS funded work, you will keep meeting the word tender. It sounds technical, but the idea is simple. This guide explains what a tender is in health and social care, in plain English, and how providers win them.

What a tender is

A tender is the formal process a public body, such as a local authority or the NHS, uses to buy a service from providers. Because they spend public money, they cannot simply pick a provider they like. They must run a fair, transparent and competitive process: they publish what they need, invite providers to apply, score every application against the same published criteria, and award to those who meet the standard and offer the best value.

Why care is bought this way

Procurement law requires public bodies to buy care fairly and openly. For providers, this is good news: it means a small, new or owner-managed service can win work against larger competitors, because awards are based on published criteria and evidence, not relationships.

How the process usually works

The council publishes a contract notice on Find a Tender or Contracts Finder. Providers download the documents from the council's portal. There is often a selection stage that checks eligibility (registration, insurance, finances, policies), then an award stage with quality questions and price. You submit by a fixed deadline, the panel scores every bid, and the contract is awarded. A short standstill period follows before it is signed.

The documents you will meet

Common terms include the ITT (invitation to tender, the main pack), the specification (what the service must deliver), quality questions or method statements (how you will deliver it), the pricing schedule, and a PQQ or selection questionnaire (eligibility). Frameworks, dynamic purchasing systems and approved provider lists are different structures for awarding this work.

What it takes to win

Winning is not about being the cheapest or the biggest. It is about meeting every eligibility gate, answering each quality question against the published mark scheme with named evidence and outcomes, and pricing realistically. Providers who write to the criteria win; those who write about themselves do not.

Win your first tender

The process is learnable, and you do not have to navigate it alone. We help care providers understand and win tenders, with a 92% win rate across 200+ submissions, and most of our writers ran care services before they wrote bids. Get a free, honest assessment of a tender.