How to find NHS tenders in the UK

The NHS and related health bodies buy a wide range of goods and services: medical equipment, estates and facilities, IT, agency staff, community services and more. Official notices for much of that spending are public. This guide explains where to look, using only official UK sources.

Start with Find a Tender

From 24 February 2025, new UK public procurement notices under the Procurement Act 2023 are published on Find a Tender, including below-threshold opportunities (except below-threshold notices in Scotland). The Cabinet Office describes Find a Tender as the central digital platform for those notices.

NHS organisations in England — trusts, foundation trusts, integrated care boards, NHS England and national buying organisations — are contracting authorities. Their Procurement Act notices appear on Find a Tender. You should still read each notice carefully: healthcare services may be bought under a different legal route, the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023, which has its own transparency requirements. The notice itself will tell you which regime applies.

For procurements that started before 24 February 2025, also check Contracts Finder. See Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder and PPN 019. PPN 019 notes that its Contracts Finder rules do not apply to the procurement of health care services within the scope of the earlier NHS Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition regulations.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, also use the national portals listed in that guide, because some local or below-threshold health opportunities may appear there rather than on Find a Tender.

How to search

1. Open the Find a Tender search.
2. Search by buyer name as well as by product. Useful starting points include the name of a local NHS trust or integrated care board, “NHS England”, “NHS Supply Chain”, and more general terms such as “NHS” plus your product or service.
3. Use CPV codes where they match what you sell. Codes often seen on health-related notices include: - 33000000 — Medical equipments, pharmaceuticals and personal care products - 33100000 — Medical equipments - 85100000 — Health services
4. If you supply estates, IT or facilities rather than clinical products, search those categories too. IT services often use 72000000; facilities management services use 79993100; cleaning services use 90910000. See the IT, facilities and cleaning guides for those searches.
5. Look at pipeline and preliminary market engagement notices, not only live tenders. They give earlier warning of work a trust or board is planning.
6. Open the official notice for the deadline, the estimated value, the legal regime, and — crucially — where to submit the bid. Find a Tender is the public noticeboard. The return is usually through a separate e-tendering portal named in the documents.

NHS Supply Chain states that it advertises its tender opportunities on Find a Tender, and that suppliers tendering with NHS Supply Chain use its e-procurement portal. Other NHS organisations use their own systems. Many in England use the Health Family eCommercial system (often referred to as Atamis). Register only on the portal named in the notice you intend to bid for, and follow its instructions.

Register before you need to bid

If you want to bid under the Procurement Act, register your organisation as a supplier on Find a Tender and complete your core supplier information. Official walk-throughs and videos are in the Cabinet Office information and guidance for suppliers. Buyers can ask you to share that profile with a share code when you take part in a procurement.

You may also need an account on the e-tendering portal named in the notice. Do this early: registration and identity checks can take time.

Official alerts

Sign in to Find a Tender with a GOV.UK One Login, save a search (for example your CPV codes plus “NHS”) and turn on official email notifications. That is the free, official route.

If you would rather have one daily email

UK Tender Alerts sends a daily filtered digest of new official notices from Find a Tender and Contracts Finder. You can set keywords such as “NHS, trust, hospital”, CPV prefixes, regions and a value range after you subscribe.

Start a 14-day free trial, then £15 a month. Cancel any time. Every item links back to the official notice. Always read that notice, and the portal it names, before you bid. The service is a filter over public data and does not guarantee completeness.