RM6397 NHS Staffing Framework: Live Tender, Closing 21 September 2026

RM6397 Clinical and Non-Clinical Temporary and Permanent Staff is the next-generation staffing agreement let by the Government Commercial Agency for the NHS Workforce Alliance. It covers temporary, fixed-term and permanent staff across clinical and non-clinical roles, plus managed service provision, for the NHS and the wider public sector.

It consolidates two predecessors into one agreement: RM6281, the National Framework for the Provision of Clinical and Healthcare Staffing, and RM6277 Non-Clinical Staffing. The published value is £2 billion excluding VAT, £2.5 billion including VAT, across a four-year term.

For a staffing business, this is not one framework among several. It is the primary compliant route to supplying workers into the NHS for the next four years, and the outgoing agreements expire in 2027 whether or not you have secured a place on the replacement.

The framework is structured into twelve lots. Nine cover direct supply, a tenth covers permanent recruitment, and the final two cover managed service provision. Each has its own regulator, its own compliance discriminator and its own characteristic way of losing marks, so we have written each one up separately:

• Lot 1: Nursing and Midwifery
• Lot 2: Medical Staffing
• Lot 3: AHP, HSS and Emergency Services
• Lot 4: Social Care Staffing
• Lot 5: Corporate Functions Supply
• Lot 6: IT Professionals and Digital Workers
• Lot 7: Legal Supply
• Lot 8: Scientific, Technical and Clinical Coding Supply
• Lot 9: Estates, Facilities Management and Ancillary Staff Supply
• Lot 10: Permanent Recruitment
• Lot 11: MSP Neutral Vendor
• Lot 12: MSP Master Vendor

The direct supply lots have been indicated as unlimited in supplier numbers, while the two managed service lots are limited. That distinction matters more than anything else in your bid or no-bid decision. On an unlimited lot, a compliant, well-evidenced submission secures a place. On a limited MSP lot you are in a ranked competition, and a merely adequate submission loses.

Bid the lots you can evidence. Agencies that spread themselves across every lot to look substantial routinely score worse than those who bid three and evidence them properly, because the evaluator is scoring depth of evidence per lot, not breadth of ambition.

Staffing framework evaluation is evidence-heavy rather than narrative-heavy. Evaluators are looking for demonstrable compliance against the NHS Employment Check Standards, clinical governance and revalidation arrangements, safeguarding, and hard operational performance data: fill rates by staff group, time-to-supply, escalation handling and audit results.

The pattern in weak submissions is consistent. They describe a recruitment process rather than evidencing an outcome, they quote capability without naming contracts, and they present figures the evaluator cannot verify. Extracting real numbers out of your operational systems and presenting them against the published criteria is most of the work, and it is why starting in the final fortnight rarely produces a competitive submission.

Glaxtons works on NHS framework submissions across the Workforce Alliance, the Provider Selection Regime, HSSF and ProCure, on NHS portals including Atamis and Jaggaer. Our success rate is 93 percent across more than 500 submissions.