Bid writing for home care and supported living providers
We write and check council home care, domiciliary care and supported living tenders at fixed prices: a Health Check of your own draft from £195 (founding price; standard £395), a full Response Draft from £795. Care tenders are marked mostly on quality: they gave quality a median 77% of the marks and drew a median of 3.5 bids per competed lot.
Care tenders in numbers
| Measure | Figure | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Median share of marks for quality | 77% | 517 lots with a published weighting; middle half 50% to 100% |
| Of lots give quality more than half the marks | 64% | 517 lots with a published weighting |
| Median bids per competed lot | 3.5 | 396 competed lots; middle half 2 to 7 |
| Of bids came from SMEs | 63% | 396 competed lots |
| Care contracts awarded in 12 months | 878 | from 285 buyers, England and Wales |
| Awarded by councils | 55% | 481 of 878 contracts |
| Awarded by NHS bodies | 36% | 312 of 878: NHS trusts and integrated care boards |
| Frameworks | 11% | 97 of 878 contracts |
Weighting and bids: ClearBid analysis of Find a Tender and Contracts Finder notices, October 2025 to October 2026. Contracts: award notices dated 18 October 2025 to 8 October 2026, home care and supported living. How we work these out.
What the notices tell you before you open the pack
- Quality decides most care tenders. 64% of lots with a published weighting gave quality more than half the marks, so your written answers carry most of the score. Our guide to how tenders are scored shows what a top-band answer needs.
- Fields are small. A median of 3.5 bids means a well-evidenced answer stands out. Most bids come from small and medium providers.
- Many tenders are split into lots. 28 of the 80 live care tenders in our index on 18 October 2026 had more than one lot. Check which lots you can deliver before you start writing.
- The regulator follows the nation. 71 of those live tenders were in England, where the CQC registers providers, and 9 in Wales, where Care Inspectorate Wales does.
Registers we check for care bids
Buyers check your registration, so before a care bid goes out we check what you claim against the public register. We're appointing experienced UK bid writers; every bid we write or check is reviewed before it reaches you, and nothing is delivered until a reviewer is in place.
| Register | How we check it |
|---|---|
| CQC | Looked up automatically against the register's open data |
| Care Inspectorate Wales | Checked by hand by your reviewer |
| Social Care Wales register | Checked by hand by your reviewer |
| Care Inspectorate (Scotland) | Looked up automatically against the register's open data |
| SSSC register (Scotland) | Checked by hand by your reviewer |
The CQC and the Care Inspectorate publish open data, so we look them up by code. Care Inspectorate Wales and the workforce registers allow checks by hand only. An unchecked registration is never presented as verified.
Prices
- Tender Breakdown: Every question, weighting, word limit, pass/fail rule and date from one tender pack, in plain English, with the buyer's award history from published notices. From £95
- Health Check: Send us a bid you've written, yourself or with AI. We estimate the score of every question on the buyer's own scale and list the 10 fixes worth the most marks. From £195
- Response Draft: We write your whole quality response from your own evidence: every answer to its marking criteria and word limit, checked against the full tender pack. From £795
- Bid Radar: A weekly email of live council, housing association and care tenders that fit your trades and area, and a 24-month calendar of contracts coming up for re-tender, from published award notices. From £49 a month
Fixed prices, no VAT added. Founding prices where shown. All services, sample deliverables or get a fixed price for your tender.
Care tenders by region
Live tenders, contracts ending in the next 12 months and the main buyers, rebuilt every night.
Home care: East Midlands, London, North East England, South East England, South West England, Wales, West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber.
Supported living: East Midlands, East of England, London, North East England, North West England, South East England, South West England, Wales, West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber.
Related guides
- How are tenders scored, and what does a 5 out of 5 answer look like?
- Social value in council and housing association tenders
- How much does a bid writer cost in the UK?
Questions
Who can help me write a tender for a council home care contract?
ClearBid writes and checks council home care, domiciliary care and supported living tenders at fixed prices: a Health Check of your own draft from £195 (founding price; standard £395), or a full Response Draft from £795. We write for one provider per lot, so we never help a competitor on the same contract.
Do you help supported living providers bidding for council frameworks?
Yes. A framework or dynamic purchasing system application is a tender like any other: we answer its quality questions to the marking scheme from your evidence. In our data, 11% of care contracts awarded in the last 12 months were frameworks.
How many providers bid for a council care tender?
A median of 3.5 per competed lot in our data (396 competed lots; middle half 2 to 7), October 2025 to October 2026. 63% of bids came from SMEs.
Do you check our CQC registration?
Yes. Before you pay, we look up your CQC registration from your website and the CQC register. For a Welsh tender the regulator is Care Inspectorate Wales, which a person checks by hand, along with your registered manager on the Social Care Wales register.
Will you write our hourly rates or price schedule?
No. We never write or advise on pricing, including hourly rates. That stays with you.
What about the personal data in our documents?
Send only what the tender needs: staff CVs are fine, people you support should not be identifiable. Documents are stored in the UK and used only for your work, and never to train AI. See how we handle your data.
Sources
- ClearBid award statistics and method. Bids and quality weighting for home care and supported living, October 2025 to October 2026
- ClearBid sector findings (scripts/sector-findings.mts). Care contracts awarded 18 October 2025 to 8 October 2026; live tenders in the index built 18 October 2026
- CQC: search services. Contains CQC data, Open Government Licence v3.0
- Care Inspectorate Wales: directory
- Social Care Wales: search the register
Public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. See who ClearBid Research is and how our figures are built.