Every council, school, NHS trust and university in the North East buys from someone. Cleaning, signage, catering, maintenance, training, printing, IT support: the list is long, the budgets are steady, and the buyers are under real pressure to spend more of it with local and smaller firms. Yet most small business owners I speak to assume public sector work is only for big companies with a bid team, so they never look.
It is not only for big companies. It does reward the businesses that are organised about it.
Where the opportunities are published
Find a Tender: the government's central digital platform. Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, this is where suppliers register to bid. Registration is free, and you only need to do it when you are ready to bid. Have your Companies House number, your last two years of accounts and details of the people who control the business to hand.
Open: the e-procurement platform run by NEPO, the North East Procurement Organisation, on behalf of twelve North East councils. NEPO says it carries around 6,000 opportunities a year, and registration is free at open-uk.org.
Buyers' own pages: universities, NHS trusts, housing associations and larger schools often advertise through their own supplier pages as well. If there is an organisation you would love to work with, find its "selling to us" page and register there too.
What makes a small business bid competitive
Read the scoring before you write a word. Every tender tells you how it will be marked. If social value is worth 20 per cent, it deserves 20 per cent of your effort.
Have your evidence ready. Case studies, insurance levels, accreditations and your policies on health and safety, data protection and the environment. Pulling these together once, properly, means the next bid takes days rather than weeks.
Make local count. Local staff, apprentices, local suppliers and time given to the community are often scored under social value, and this is where a North East business can beat a national one.
Say no to the wrong ones. A bid you cannot win costs as much time as one you can. Being selective is a strategy, not a lack of ambition.
The Act also extends 30 day payment terms across a wider range of public sector contracts, which matters a great deal when you are a small business carrying the cost of the work.
Where I come in
Tender work sits inside the business development function I run for clients. In practice that means a weekly search against your trade and your patch, a shortlist of what is actually worth your time, and then the questionnaires, bids and evidence pack written with you, in your words, with nothing submitted until you have approved it. The first bid is the hardest. After that, you have a library to work from.
If public sector work is something you have always meant to look at, let's have a conversation about whether it fits your business, or see how it sits within my services.