How to Win NHS Contracts: Where They're Published and How They're Awarded

The NHS is the largest single buyer in the UK, and one of the hardest to sell to — not because the opportunities are hidden, but because there is no such thing as "NHS procurement". There are two separate legal regimes, hundreds of autonomous buying organisations, and at least four systems the work is published on.

Getting oriented is most of the battle.

The first question: is what you sell a healthcare service?

This determines everything.

Healthcare services — clinical and care services commissioned for patients — are procured under the Provider Selection Regime, in force since 1 January 2024. That covers integrated care boards, NHS England, NHS trusts and foundation trusts, and local authorities commissioning public health services.

Everything else the NHS buys — IT systems, facilities management, catering, agency staffing, medical devices and consumables, construction, consultancy, training, equipment maintenance — is procured under the Procurement Act 2023, like any other public contract.

Most suppliers are in the second group and spend time reading about the first. Work out which you are in before anything else.

If you sell healthcare services: the Provider Selection Regime

The PSR replaced the older NHS competition rules and deliberately moved away from compulsory tendering. It gives commissioners five routes:

• Direct Award Process A — there is only one possible provider.
• Direct Award Process B — patients have a choice of provider and the commissioner contracts with all qualifying providers.
• Direct Award Process C — renewing with the existing provider where the contract is not changing considerably and the commissioner is satisfied with performance.
• Most Suitable Provider — the commissioner can identify the best provider from what it already knows, without an open competition.
• Competitive Process — used where the other routes do not apply.

The consequence for a new entrant is stark. Most PSR awards are not competitions you can enter. Direct Award C in particular means a satisfied commissioner can keep renewing an incumbent.

So the work is not bid writing. It is being known:

• Be visible to the commissioner before the decision. Under the Most Suitable Provider route, the commissioner decides on the basis of information it already holds. If it does not hold any about you, you cannot be the most suitable.
• Engage with market engagement exercises, provider forums and integrated care board planning.
• Watch the award notices. They tell you which contracts are going where, and when they end — which is when the conversation should begin, not the month before.
• Look at where an incumbent is struggling. A commissioner that is not satisfied with performance cannot use Direct Award C.

If you sell everything else: standard public procurement

Here the NHS behaves like any large public buyer under the Procurement Act, with the usual thresholds — from 1 January 2026, around £208,000 including VAT for goods and services at sub-central bodies, £5.19m for works, and £663,540 for light touch services — and the usual notice sequence.

Below those, notices appear on Contracts Finder once past £30,000 including VAT.

Where NHS opportunities are actually published

This is where most suppliers lose time. NHS work is spread across:

• Find a Tender — above-threshold notices, required by the Act.
• Contracts Finder — below-threshold notices.
• Atamis — the Salesforce-based system behind NHS England's procurement portal and many individual trusts. Substantial volume, and easy to miss if you only watch the national portals.
• NHS Supply Chain, operating on Jaggaer, for the national buying of devices and consumables.
• In-Tend, ProContract, EU Supply and MultiQuote, used by individual trusts, ambulance services and NHS bodies depending on what they bought.

Add to that regional collaboratives and purchasing consortia running their own frameworks, and you have a landscape no single national portal describes.

Frameworks are how most of it is bought

A very large share of non-clinical NHS spending happens through frameworks: the Government Commercial Agency's cross-government agreements, NHS-specific frameworks, and regional consortium frameworks.

If you are not on the relevant one, the trust that wants your product frequently cannot buy it from you, however much it would like to. The question to ask any NHS contact is not "do you have a tender coming up?" but "which framework would you buy this through?"

Where a dynamic market exists in your category, join it — it stays open to new applicants throughout its life, unlike a framework.

What NHS bids ask for that others do not

Expect, on top of the standard selection material:

• Clinical governance and safety evidence, where relevant, including incident reporting and learning.
• Information governance: the Data Security and Protection Toolkit, DPIA support, and detailed handling of patient data.
• NHS terms and conditions, which are non-negotiable in most competitions.
• Interoperability and standards for anything digital — NHS login, clinical coding standards, integration with existing systems.
• Equality and health inequalities: how your service works for the people least well served by the current one. Answer this with specifics; it is scored and it is usually answered generically.
• Social value, weighted at a minimum of 10% of the total score under current central government policy.

A realistic route in

1. Decide which regime applies to what you sell.
2. If it is PSR, treat this as a relationship and intelligence exercise — track award notices, contract end dates and commissioner plans, and be known before the decision point.
3. If it is standard procurement, register on Find a Tender and on Atamis, and identify the frameworks and dynamic markets your buyers use.
4. Start with a single trust or integrated care board rather than "the NHS". They are separate organisations with separate budgets and separate procurement teams.
5. Get one contract, deliver it visibly, and use the reference. NHS buyers talk to each other more than almost any other sector.

Seeing the whole NHS picture at once

TendersHub tracks 10,500+ live UK tenders including NHS notices from Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Atamis and the eProcurement platforms individual trusts use — in one place, with buyer, value and closing date visible before you open a document.