Adult Social Care Tenders Under the Procurement Act 2023: A Provider's Guide to the Light Touch Regime

Adult Social Care Tenders Under the Procurement Act: A Provider's Guide to the Light Touch Regime

If you provide domiciliary care, supported living, day services or residential care and you have a council or ICB tender in your inbox, the Procurement Act (the legislation introduced in the prior cycle to replace earlier regulations) applies to any procurement started on or after the implementation date in the previous cycle during early 2025. Adult social care services fall under the light touch regime, which means buyers still set their own procedure but must publish on Find a Tender and follow new transparency rules that change how you prepare, respond and challenge.

The practical shift for providers is not the rules themselves but the cadence: faster timelines, mandatory assessment summaries replacing old debrief letters, and a new gateway at the front end called preliminary market engagement that often determines who shapes the specification before the tender even opens.

What changed under the current regime

The Procurement Act replaced the previous Public Contracts Regulations. For adult social care, the light touch regime continues. Buyers still design their own process, choose their award criteria and set response windows. What changed is the transparency layer.

Every qualifying tender now appears on Find a Tender, the UK-wide portal that replaced the legacy OJEU and Contracts Finder notices. In Scotland, Public Contracts Scotland remains the entry point. Once you spot a notice, you register on the buyer's own platform. NHS trusts and integrated care boards use Atamis. Local authorities typically use Proactis, ProContract or In-Tend. The tender documents, clarifications and submission all happen there, not on Find a Tender itself.

The most immediate change is the assessment summary. After evaluation, the buyer must send you a written breakdown of your scores and the reasons you won or lost. This replaced the previous debrief letter, which was often a paragraph. The new summaries (as of 2026-09-09) are required to be specific enough that you can decide whether to challenge. In practice, quality varies. Some councils send score-by-score commentary. Others send tabulated marks with minimal reasoning. The content depends on how the buyer interprets the drafting obligation, and most are still learning.

Standstill is now eight working days from the date the buyer sends the award decision notice. If you want to challenge, you have that window to issue proceedings. The previous ten-calendar-day standstill no longer applies for procurements started under the Act.

What did not change

The fundamentals are stable. Buyers still ask for the same evidence: your CQC rating or Care Inspectorate grade, safeguarding policies, staff training records, outcomes data, workforce plans, case studies, insurances, financial standing and price or rate card. Social value remains a scored section, typically weighted between ten and twenty per cent. Quality still dominates. On a typical domiciliary or supported living tender, quality might carry sixty to seventy per cent and price thirty to forty per cent.

The structure is still qualification and award. The first stage confirms you are capable: right registrations, insurance levels, no disqualifying conduct. The second stage scores quality and cost. Some buyers separate these into distinct envelopes. Others run a single-stage process and score everything at once. The light touch regime allows both.

Your submission is still written in text boxes on the portal, often with a word count per question. A domiciliary care question on safeguarding might give you 500 words. A day opportunities question on person-centred planning might allow 750. You cannot upload a general brochure and expect evaluators to hunt for answers. Each question stands alone.

The evidence evaluators actually score

Evaluators work to a published scoring matrix, usually on a zero-to-five or zero-to-four scale. A typical descriptor at score three says "meets requirements with some evidence of added value". Score four requires "strong evidence with clear examples of impact". Score five, if the buyer uses it, is reserved for exceptional innovation or outcomes beyond the specification.

The CQC rating is often a pass or fail at qualification, not a scored item. A provider rated Requires Improvement may still be allowed to bid if the notice does not set Good as a minimum. But in quality scoring, evaluators look for how you demonstrate outcomes, not just that you hold a rating. A case study showing measurable improvement in a service user's independence scores higher than a paragraph summarising your last inspection.

Safeguarding questions are marked on policy, training frequency and evidence that staff know what to do. A provider that describes quarterly safeguarding supervision, names the local authority safeguarding lead they work with and gives a redacted example of an alert they managed well will score higher than one that attaches a generic policy and says "we follow statutory guidance".

Workforce questions test how you recruit, retain and develop care staff. Evaluators want to see your turnover rate, your pay structure relative to the area, your progression pathways and how you cover sickness and leave without agency. A worked example showing how you filled twelve rotas across three supported living houses during a winter absence peak will outscore a statement that you have a stable team.

Social value is scored from a menu. The buyer publishes themes: local employment, apprenticeships, carbon reduction, community benefit. You commit to specific actions and the buyer scores based on relevance and scale. Saying "we will recruit locally" scores low. Saying "we will offer six-month paid traineeships to two care certificate learners per year from the borough's adult skills service" scores higher because it is measurable and tied to the buyer's priority.

Price is usually scored on a formula. The lowest bid gets full marks and yours is scaled proportionally. If the lowest hourly rate is £18.50 and yours is £20.00, you lose points. This is why understanding the local market rate before you price is critical. Undercutting to win and then struggling to deliver is a faster route out of the market than losing a tender.

What to prepare before the notice publishes

Most providers wait for the tender to go live. By then, the specification is set and you are responding to someone else's vision of the service. The window to shape requirements closes much earlier, during preliminary market engagement.

Buyers are now encouraged to run supplier days, one-to-one meetings or written consultations before they draft the specification. For a large re-procurement, this might happen three to six months before the notice. Smaller procurements might skip it or run a single online session with two weeks' notice.

If you provide services in the area, you should already be on the buyer's mailing list. If you are not, email the commissioning team and ask to be added to their social care provider engagement list. When a prior information notice appears on Find a Tender, respond immediately. These notices are not the tender itself. They are advance signals that a procurement is coming, often with an invitation to register interest or attend a briefing.

This week (week starting 2026-09-09), a Scottish council published a prior information notice in August 2026 for a supported living framework with the full tender expected late November 2026. Providers who attended the August briefing were able to feed into the lot structure and the quality-to-price weighting. Providers who wait for November will bid to a finished specification.

Prepare your evidence library now. Gather your last two years of CQC or Care Inspectorate reports, your safeguarding training log, your staff handbook, your most recent financial accounts, your insurance schedule, your equality and environmental policies, and at least three case studies with outcomes data. Redact names but keep the detail. An evaluator scoring forty bids in a day will remember the case study with the named mobility goal, the twelve-week timeline and the photograph of the service user's first unassisted trip to the local shop. They will not remember the case study that says "we supported someone to achieve their goals".

A worked example: day opportunities tender, August 2026

A county council and its local integrated care board ran a joint tender for day opportunities, valued at £31.5 million over five years. The contract notice appeared on Find a Tender on 12 August 2026 with a submission deadline of 24 August 2026, a twelve-day window. The procurement had started in May 2026 with a supplier day, so it was compliant with the Act's transparency requirements, but providers who missed that event had twelve days to write a full tender.

The evaluation model was sixty per cent quality, forty per cent price. Quality split across six questions: safeguarding, person-centred planning, workforce, outcomes measurement, social value and partnership working. Each question carried ten per cent and was marked zero to five.

A provider scoring four out of five on every quality question and submitting the median price would achieve a total score of 80 out of 100. The winning provider scored 88: fives on safeguarding, person-centred planning and outcomes, fours on workforce and partnership, a three on social value, and a price five per cent below median.

The assessment summary sent to unsuccessful bidders included their score on each question, the range of scores across all bidders, and between two and four sentences explaining what the evaluators saw as strengths and gaps. One provider scored a two on outcomes measurement because they described data collection but gave no example of how they used data to change practice. Another scored a three on workforce because their pay rates were at local minimum but their progression pathway was not evidenced. Both were told this in the summary. Under the previous regime, they might have received a single paragraph or been told only their overall ranking.

Why preliminary market engagement is the real start

The tender notice is the formal start of the procurement, but the decisions that determine whether you can win are made earlier. Buyers use engagement to test whether the market can deliver what they want, whether their budget is realistic and whether the service model needs redesigning.

If you tell the buyer during engagement that the specification requires night staffing levels that cannot be met at the indicative rate, and five other providers say the same, the buyer will usually adjust before they publish. If you say it in a clarification question after the notice goes live, the buyer can adjust, but they are less likely to because it requires a formal amendment and often an extended deadline.

Engagement also signals who is serious. A provider that attends the briefing, submits thoughtful written feedback and offers to share anonymised workforce data is building a relationship. A provider that ignores engagement and then submits a generic bid is not. Evaluators are meant to score blindly, but the commissioner who wrote the specification knows which providers helped shape it.

Not every procurement includes formal engagement. Smaller tenders, particularly those below the threshold that requires a Find a Tender notice, may go straight to market. But for any contract above £1 million in value or longer than two years, expect at least a prior information notice or a briefing session. Track your local authority's forward procurement plan, published on their website. Track your local ICB's commissioning intentions, usually published quarterly. Sign up for daily alerts on Find a Tender for your sectors and regions.

Another worked example: NHS trust mental health day centre, closing November 2026

An NHS trust in the Midlands published a tender on Atamis in late September 2026 for a VCSE mental health day centre, valued at £800,000 over three years with an option to extend for two. The submission deadline is 12 November 2026. The trust had run a prior information notice in June 2026 and held two online engagement sessions in July 2026, one for existing providers and one open to new entrants.

During engagement, providers told the trust that the draft specification required seven-day opening but the indicative budget assumed five-day staffing. The trust adjusted the specification to five-day core hours with optional weekend sessions priced separately. This change was published in the final tender.

The evaluation model is seventy per cent quality, thirty per cent price. Quality questions cover co-production, clinical governance, safeguarding, outcomes, workforce and social value. Each is marked zero to four, and the trust published worked examples of scoring descriptors in the tender pack. For co-production, a score of two requires evidence that service users are consulted. A score of three requires evidence that service users co-design activities. A score of four requires evidence that service users govern or lead parts of the service.

A provider bidding this contract without attending the July engagement would not know that the trust had reduced the opening hours requirement and would likely overprice. They also would not know that the trust's priority social value theme is employing people with lived experience of mental health challenges, which was shaped by feedback during engagement.

Frequently asked questions

How long do we have to respond to a care tender under the Procurement Act?

There is no minimum response time under the light touch regime. Buyers set the deadline based on complexity, and you will see windows from ten days to eight weeks. A domiciliary care retender in an area where you already operate might give three weeks. A new supported living service with property requirements might give six. If the deadline is unrealistic, raise it in a clarification question immediately. Buyers can extend, though many will not unless multiple providers ask.

Do we need to register on Find a Tender or just the buyer's portal?

You register on the buyer's portal, not Find a Tender. Find a Tender is a notice board. It shows you which procurements are open and links you to the buyer's platform where you download documents, ask questions and submit. Some providers register for daily email alerts from Find a Tender so they do not miss notices in their area. Registration for alerts is free and takes two minutes.

Can we still challenge a tender decision under the new Act?

Yes, and the process is faster. You have eight working days from the award decision notice to issue court proceedings. The buyer must send you an assessment summary explaining your scores, and that summary is the basis for deciding whether you have grounds. Challenges remain expensive and rare, but the summary gives you more information than the previous debrief letters, so you can judge risk before instructing solicitors.

How we work with care providers

Glaxtons writes adult social care tenders for providers across the domiciliary, supported living, day services and residential sectors. We work on a success fee tied to contract award, not to framework accreditation or shortlisting. That means we price when the outcome is certain, and we focus on the tenders where our input changes the result.

Most care providers come to us with a live tender and a tight deadline. If you have more time, we will help you prepare your evidence library, review your case studies and shape your response to the preliminary engagement stage. If the tender is already open, we work to your deadline.

We do not write bids that guess what evaluators want. We write to the published scoring descriptors and we build answers from your evidence. If you do not have the evidence, we tell you before we write, not after you lose.

Call 020 3668 5488

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