Getting Found and Getting Registered: The Complete Beginner’s Guide to UK Public Sector Opportunities

If you’ve never bid for public sector work, the first two hurdles are embarrassingly basic, and they stop more SMEs than any scoring criterion ever will.

One: you don’t know where opportunities are published, so you never see them. Two: when you do find one, you’re not registered in the right place to respond. This guide fixes both, in one go, using the UK’s official systems and the current Procurement Act 2023 regime.

Part 1 — Where opportunities are actually published

The two UK-wide “big ones”

Contracts Finder is the friendly starter portal. GOV.UK describes it as the place to search for contract opportunities worth over £12,000 (including VAT) with central government and its agencies. You can search current and upcoming opportunities and look up past contracts, with or without an account, though an account lets you save searches and get email alerts. It’s the best place to learn how opportunities are written and what buyers typically ask for.

Find a Tender (the FTS) is where higher-value, regulated opportunities and lifecycle notices are published. As a rule of thumb, contracts above roughly £139,688 (including VAT) appear here rather than on Contracts Finder. Crucially, Find a Tender is now also the Central Digital Platform (CDP) under the Procurement Act 2023, more on that in Part 2.

If you’re in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland

GOV.UK is clear that the devolved nations run their own portals, and if you only search one UK-wide site you’ll miss a chunk of the market:

•        Scotland: Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) — the Scottish Government’s national portal, with free access and email alerts.

•        Wales: Sell2Wales — free advertising of Welsh public sector opportunities, supplier profiles and alerts.

•        Northern Ireland: eTendersNI — opportunities for NI departments and related bodies; register as a supplier to respond and receive notifications.

Don’t forget frameworks and pipelines

Not all spend appears as an open tender you can bid for today. Crown Commercial Service (CCS) signposts upcoming agreements (frameworks) and pipeline notices. Sometimes the smartest move is getting onto an agreement first, or preparing early for a re-let you can see coming.

Part 2 — Getting registered on the Central Digital Platform (CDP)

Under the Procurement Act 2023 (in force since 24 February 2025), the Central Digital Platform is the enhanced Find a Tender service. In plain terms, it’s a single place to register once, hold your core organisational information, and share it with buyers when a tender requires it.

The single most common beginner mistake

The CDP is not the same thing as the old Supplier Registration Service. Find a Tender is now the CDP, and you won’t find your CDP identifier or share code on the Supplier Registration portal. If you’re hunting for it in the wrong place and getting frustrated — you’re not broken, you’re just on the wrong website.

The two terms you’ll keep hearing

•        Unique identifier: the reference you receive when you register your organisation on the CDP. Some tenders now require you to provide it as a condition of participation.

•        Share code: generated once you complete the Supplier Information questionnaire. It’s how you share your stored core details with a specific buyer, your information isn’t public; it’s only visible to authorities you choose to share it with.

Step-by-step registration

1.     Create a GOV.UK One Login using your work email and complete the verification steps.

2.     Register your organisation and first administrator on Find a Tender. Agree internally who the administrator is before you start.

3.     Complete the Supplier Information questionnaire so you can generate your share code.

4.     Set up more than one user (admin/editor/viewer roles) so you’re not locked out when one person is on holiday.

5.     Share your core supplier information with the contracting authority whenever a tender asks for it.

Part 3 — The trap that catches everyone: “found it” is not “submit it”

This is the single most common reason first-time bidders panic. You discover a notice on Find a Tender or Contracts Finder, then realise the bid must be submitted through a completely different e-tendering portal.

•        A notice may be published on Find a Tender but require submission via a separate e-tendering portal.

•        NHS and health procurements often run solely through a named portal such as Atamis.

•        Local authorities frequently use their own portals (for example a council’s business portal).

The golden rule: you might discover the opportunity on a search portal, but you must submit exactly where the tender instructions say, and you must register on that submission portal in good time, not at 11:58pm.

Your simple starter routine

1.     Pick five keywords and one geography. Search the way buyers describe the work (“grounds maintenance,” “training,” “consultancy”), not how you describe yourself.

2.     Save searches and switch on email alerts on every relevant portal so the system does the hunting.

3.     Register on the CDP now, before you need it, and generate your share code.

4.     When something lands, read the submission instructions first and register on the right portal early.

“Found and registered” checklist

•        I’m searching Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, plus the devolved portal for where I work.

•        Saved searches and alerts are on.

•        I know CDP = Find a Tender (not the Supplier Registration Service).

•        Organisation registered, Supplier Information completed, share code generated.

•        At least two people have CDP access.

•        For each live bid, I’ve checked where to submit and registered there early.

Conclusion: do the boring setup once

Finding opportunities and getting registered isn’t a dark art, it’s a one-time setup followed by a weekly habit. Get your portals, alerts and CDP registration sorted now, while there’s no deadline breathing down your neck, and you remove an entire category of last-minute panic from your bidding life. The companies that win consistently aren’t the ones who search hardest, they’re the ones who were ready when the right opportunity appeared.

Written by Rob Ward, Co-Founder of BidVantage. Rob has over 16 years of bid writing experience and has worked on more than 250 bids with an 85%+ win rate. More about our team