How to win cleaning contracts, and keep them

01

How cleaning contracts are bought in the UK

If you want to grow your cleaning business, you need a steady way to secure new cleaning contracts, and there is no single way to win them. Most commercial cleaning contracts in the UK reach a provider in one of three ways, and each needs a different approach.

• Direct private sector buying: an office, a retailer or a private school asks two or three cleaning companies for a quote. Most office cleaning contracts are won this way, and relationships, referral and a site visit with the decision makers decide most of them. There may be no formal tender at all.
• Through an intermediary: facilities management companies, managing agents and property managers buy cleaning on behalf of building owners, often across several sites. They want a supplier that makes their own reporting easier.
• Public sector tenders: councils, schools and academy trusts, NHS bodies, universities and central government buy through formal procurement, with published criteria and scored responses.

Public procurement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is governed by the Procurement Act 2023, which came into force on 24 February 2025 and replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 for new procurements. Contracting authorities award to the most advantageous tender, judged against the award criteria they publish, and notices are published on the government's central digital platform, Find a Tender, where suppliers register; some procurements begun under the old rules still appear on Contracts Finder. The tender process for a cleaning tender is set out in the documents from the start, including the deadline for tender submission. Scotland keeps its own regime under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 and the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015, with opportunities on Public Contracts Scotland. Wales also uses Sell2Wales, and Northern Ireland eTendersNI.

Many public buyers also call off cleaning from frameworks: pre-approved supplier lists run by buying organisations. Getting onto a framework is itself a tender, and a place on one is a licence to compete, not a contract.

02

What buyers look for in a cleaning contractor

Whatever the size of the organisation, a buyer is trying to reduce risk: the risk of complaints, of a health and safety incident, of a contractor that fails at mobilisation or walks away mid-contract. The evidence they usually want is:

• Insurance: employers' liability insurance, which the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires, with a £5 million minimum set by regulations made under it, and public liability cover at the level the buyer sets.
• Health and safety: written policies and procedures, COSHH assessments, risk assessments and method statements, and an accident record. Health and safety accreditations such as CHAS, SafeContractor or Constructionline are often asked for as a shortcut.
• Quality assurance: how you inspect, audit and put failures right. ISO 9001 for quality management, ISO 14001 for environmental management and ISO 45001 for occupational health and safety are common requirements on larger contracts.
• Trained staff: induction training for staff who join, and recognised training such as the British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICSc) programmes.
• Supervision and cover: who manages the site, how often a manager visits, and how absence is covered.
• Previous experience: contracts of similar size and type, with references and customer testimonials the buyer can check.
• Financial standing: accounts that show the business can carry the contract's payroll before the first invoice is paid.
• People practices: right to work checks, vetting where the site needs it, and pay. Some buyers ask whether you pay the real Living Wage set by the Living Wage Foundation, which is higher than the statutory National Living Wage.
• Environmental awareness and social value: products, waste, travel and what the contract does for the local community.

None of these wins a contract on its own. Together they decide whether you are on the shortlist, and many are pass or fail questions where a missing certificate ends the bid.

03

Before the tender: choosing and preparing

The biggest mistake many cleaning companies make is bidding on every tender they see. Each tender response takes days of work, and a low win rate across many bids costs more than a high one across a few. The surest way to improve win rates is to bid less often, for contracts you are well placed to win. Decide bid or no bid on a short list of questions:

1. Is it the kind of building and sector you already clean well, such as offices, schools or healthcare?
2. Is it close enough to your existing sites to supervise properly?
3. Can you meet every pass or fail requirement now, not by the start date?
4. Is the current service provided by an in-house team or already outsourced? If outsourced, why is it being re-tendered, and how does the incumbent perform?
5. Will the staff transfer to you under TUPE, and can you afford their terms?
6. Is the budget realistic for the specification?

Build relationships before a tender is released. Private sector buyers and facilities managers remember the provider who came to look at the building, asked sensible questions and followed up. Public buyers are constrained in what they can discuss once a procurement is running, but many hold market engagement sessions before it starts, and those are worth attending.

Get bid-ready in advance. Keep a library of up-to-date policies, certificates, insurance documents, case studies, CVs of your contract managers and the answers you have written before, so each tender starts from your best previous work rather than a blank page.

04

Writing a tender response that scores

Public tenders are marked by evaluators working through a scoring scheme, question by question. Private buyers read less formally but look for the same things. A high-scoring answer:

• Answers the question asked, in the order asked, using the buyer's own terms. Evaluators score against the question, not against your company.
• Is specific to the building: this site's washrooms, this reception, this school's holiday deep clean, not a paragraph that could go into any bid.
• Provides evidence: how you did it elsewhere, with a named reference the buyer can call, figures you can prove and the records you would show.
• Explains method: how many hours on site, when, doing what, supervised by whom, checked how.
• Covers mobilisation: a detailed mobilisation plan from contract award to day one and beyond, including TUPE, recruitment, equipment and site induction.
• Sets out quality assurance: audit frequency, KPIs, reporting and how failures are put right, so the buyer can see how service delivery will be managed.
• Prices additional services separately: periodic deep cleans, window cleaning and ad hoc jobs, so the core price for the provision of cleaning services can be compared like for like.
• Addresses the buyer's pain points: if the building is being re-tendered because of complaints, show how you would stop them recurring.

In most cases your experience will be in managing and providing cleaning services, not in writing tender responses. If you bid often, it is worth either training someone in bid writing or using bid writers for the largest opportunities, but the operational detail has to come from the people who will run the contract. Evaluators can tell the difference between a method and a brochure.

05

Pricing, TUPE and value for money

Labour is by far the largest cost in a cleaning contract, so pricing starts with hours: how many are needed to deliver the specification at the frequencies stated, at what times, and at what rate. Then add supervision, holiday cover, holiday pay, employer's National Insurance, pension contributions under auto-enrolment, training, equipment, consumables if you supply them, insurance, overheads and margin. Check each rate against the statutory minimum that will apply during the contract, not only today's: the National Living Wage, the legal minimum for workers aged 21 and over, is £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026, and the minimum wage rates change on 1 April every year.

If the service is moving from another contractor or an in-house team, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) will usually apply, and the staff who work on the contract will transfer to you on their existing terms. The outgoing employer must give you employee liability information at least 28 days before the transfer. Price the actual transferring workforce, not the one you would have designed, and ask the buyer for anonymised staff data during the tender if it is not provided.

Value for money is not the lowest price. A bid priced below the hours the specification needs either loses money or cuts visits, and buyers who have been through that before will mark it down. Show how the price is built, and where you can, offer options: the specification as written, and a clearly explained alternative.

How much should I charge for 8 hours of cleaning?

There is no set price, but the wages alone set a floor: 8 hours at the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour, the minimum for workers aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026, is £101.68 before any on-costs. Add the employer's costs, supervision, equipment, overheads and margin described above, because a price close to the wage bill loses money.

06

Keeping the contract is the best bid for the next one, and where SiteClara fits

How do you keep large commercial cleaning contracts once you win them? Across the cleaning industry the answer is the same: by making the client's life easy and never letting them discover a problem before you do. Contracts are rarely lost over one bad day; they are lost over a run of small complaints the client had to raise themselves, with nothing to show what was actually done. And when a contract comes up for renewal, the incumbent's record is either its strongest evidence or its biggest weakness.

SiteClara gives a provider that record. A printed QR poster at each location, with an optional NFC tag behind it, lets staff scan or tap on their own phone, with no app to install, to see the checks due there and mark them done, or explain what stopped them. Issues found on the round are reported there, with a photo, and go onto the team's list of jobs until someone closes them. The supervisor sees what is due, done and missed, and approves a daily report that goes to nominated management or client contacts at 8am the next morning: what was reported, what was completed, what is still open, and how scheduled checks went, for example 12 of 12 completed.

In a tender, that is something to describe in your quality assurance answer and, on a renewal, to point to. It is priced per building, with no per-person fees, which keeps it simple to include in a bid.

07

Further reading, and a list to take away

For public sector work, the Cabinet Office publishes guidance on the Procurement Act 2023 for suppliers as well as buyers, and opportunities are listed on Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI. Acas publishes plain guidance on TUPE. The Health and Safety Executive publishes guidance on COSHH and on employers' liability insurance, and the British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICSc) sets out its training and accreditation routes.

Before your next bid, check that you:

• have decided bid or no bid against a short, honest list of questions;
• can meet every pass or fail requirement today;
• have visited the site and understood why it is being tendered;
• have priced the hours the specification needs, including TUPE staff on their real terms;
• answer each question specifically, with evidence a buyer can check;
• include a mobilisation plan and a quality assurance method with KPIs;
• keep a bid library of current policies, certificates and case studies;
• can show how your existing contracts are performing, day by day.