The number determines the portal, the procedure and how much of a chance you have. Here is the current picture and what it means for where you should be looking.
Public procurement in the UK is governed by value. Cross a threshold and the contract must be advertised, follow a defined procedure and run to a set timetable. Stay below it and the buyer has considerable discretion — which cuts both ways for suppliers.
Thresholds under the Procurement Act 2023 are set including VAT and reviewed every two years. Broadly:
Above threshold, the contract must be advertised on Find a Tender. Always confirm the current figure on GOV.UK before relying on it — these are revised periodically.
Separately, contracts must be published on Contracts Finder above much lower values:
This band — roughly £30,000 up to £214,904 for a council buying services — is where a large volume of genuinely winnable SME work sits. It is advertised, so you can find it, but it is below the threshold that triggers the full procedure, so competitions are shorter, documentation is lighter and the field is often smaller.
If you are new to public sector work, this band is where to start. It is also the band most commonly ignored by suppliers who only watch high-value notices.
Under £12,000 or £30,000, buyers can approach suppliers directly, often through three quotes from a local list. Nothing is published, so no alert will find it. The only route in is being on the buyer's list — which means introducing yourself to the procurement team, registering on the authority's supplier portal and being present when someone needs a quote.
This is unglamorous and it works. Many long public sector relationships start with a £4,000 job nobody advertised.
Health, social care, education and certain other services get a higher threshold (£663,540) and a lighter procedure, because the EU-derived rules recognised these markets work differently. Buyers have more flexibility on process, which in practice means more use of dynamic markets, provider lists and framework arrangements that stay open to new entrants. If you are in care, training or community services, this is an advantage: entry points are more frequent than in a conventional framework market.
Buyers must not artificially split a contract to avoid a threshold. But they may legitimately divide a contract into lots — and under the Act they are encouraged to, specifically to widen SME access. A £3m contract split into six regional lots is six competitions you might realistically win rather than one you certainly cannot.
When you see a large notice, read the lot structure before dismissing it. The headline value is frequently the sum of parts that are individually modest.
Whatever the band, the thresholds tell you which portal to watch. Five official portals publish UK notices, and value alone determines which one a given contract lands on — which is the practical argument for aggregating them rather than picking one.