UK public sector tendering
Because nothing in the answer tells the evaluator which criterion each sentence satisfies. Evaluators award marks against published criteria, and they cannot award you marks for something you know but did not write down.
A serious tender response costs a small business somewhere between 20 and 80 hours of senior time. At a conservative £50 an hour of opportunity cost, that is £1,000 to £4,000 per bid. A business that bids for everything and wins one in ten is spending £10,000 to £40,000 to win a single contract.
The discipline that improves that ratio is not better writing. It is bidding less. A supplier that bids for half as many contracts and wins one in three has doubled its revenue and halved its cost.
Two changes reset the rules, and most SME answer libraries have not caught up with either.
The Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025. New procedures, the Central Digital Platform, mandatory assessment summaries telling you how you and the winner scored, an eight-working-day standstill, a debarment regime, and published performance ratings on contracts over £5 million.
PPN 002 replaced the 2020 Social Value Model and became mandatory on 1 October 2025 — restructured around five government missions and eight policy outcomes, worth a minimum of 10% of total marks.
Two consequences worth knowing before your next submission. Buyers are now encouraged to select a single social value outcome per contract, so a response that sprays across several will score badly. And you are scored on the method statement and implementation plan — volumes are explicitly not evaluated. A well-planned commitment from a ten-person firm can outscore a large round number from a national one.
Written from GOV.UK primary sources. No sign-up, no email wall.
The toolkit
Bid consultancies charge from £950 for a bid review to £15,000 for a full bid sprint. None of them publish their frameworks, because the frameworks are the business. Government publishes the rules; nobody publishes the method.