Most bidding advice assumes you already know what you’re bidding for. It teaches you to write a better method statement, evidence your outcomes, sharpen your social value.
All useful. None of it helps if you’re pursuing the wrong kind of contract entirely.
Because a place on a framework, a spot on a dynamic market, and a block contract are not variations on a theme. They deliver radically different income, demand different investment, and suit providers at completely different stages of growth. Chase the wrong one and you can win the bid and still damage the business.
Here’s how each works, what it actually pays, and which you should be going after.
First, a Change You Need to Know About
The Procurement Act 2023, in force since February 2025, reshaped the landscape. Two things matter for care providers.
Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS) are being replaced by dynamic markets. Existing DPSs continue until they expire, but the future is dynamic markets, which work similarly and cover a broader range of services.
Open frameworks now exist. Previously, if you missed a framework’s procurement window, you waited up to four years for another chance. An open framework must reopen at least once in its first three years and can run for up to eight, letting new providers join partway through. For smaller providers, this is genuinely significant.
Both changes were designed to open public contracts to SMEs. Whether you benefit depends on knowing which door to knock on.
Framework Agreements
What it is
A framework is a pre-approved list of providers, appointed through a single competitive process, from which a commissioner can award contracts (“call-offs”) over the framework’s lifetime. Winning a place doesn’t win you work. It wins you the right to be considered for work.
Frameworks typically run four years, or up to eight if they’re open frameworks.
What it actually pays
This is where providers get hurt. A framework place guarantees nothing. No minimum volume, no minimum value, no income at all.
Call-offs are awarded either through a mini-competition among framework members or, where the framework sets out core terms and an objective selection mechanism, by direct award. If you’re one of fourteen providers on a lot and the commissioner distributes work by rota, your share is one-fourteenth. If they award by mini-competition, you bid again, every time.
Providers routinely celebrate a framework win, then discover eighteen months later that they’ve received two referrals.
Who it suits
Frameworks suit providers with the capacity to absorb variable volume and the appetite to keep competing after appointment. They matter enormously for credibility, sitting on a county council framework is a reference in itself, and they’re often the only route into a given authority.
They’re a poor fit for providers who need predictable income to service fixed costs, or who lack the bandwidth for repeated mini-competitions.
Before you bid, ask: how many providers per lot? Is work allocated by rota, mini-competition, or direct award? What volume did the previous framework actually generate? Commissioners will often answer these through clarification questions. Ask them.
Dynamic Markets (and the DPS They Replace)
What it is
A dynamic market is an open list of qualified providers. Unlike a framework, it never closes. You can apply to join at any point during its life, and there’s no cap on the number of members. Contracts are then awarded through competitive procedures run among the members.
What it actually pays
Similar economics to a framework, with two differences that cut both ways.
The good news: entry is cheap and continuous. You qualify once, on legal, financial, and technical capability, and you’re in. If your accreditation or CQC position improves next year, you can join then, rather than waiting for a procurement window.
The bad news: there’s no cap on members. A framework limits competition to the providers appointed. A dynamic market may have sixty. Every call-off is contested, and margins compress accordingly.
Who it suits
Dynamic markets are the natural entry point for newer and smaller providers. The qualification burden is proportionate, the door is always open, and you can build a track record of small call-offs into the evidence base you’ll need for framework bids later.
They also suit providers with a genuine specialism. In a crowded market, a distinctive offer, complex needs, a specific condition, a hard-to-staff geography, gets noticed when a general one doesn’t.
If you’re a smaller provider wondering where to start, this is usually the answer, whether you deliver domiciliary care, supported living, or specialised transport.
Block and Call-Off Contracts
What it is
A direct contract for a defined volume of service, a set number of hours, beds, or packages, over a fixed term. The commissioner commits to buying; you commit to delivering.
What it actually pays
Everything a framework doesn’t: guaranteed income. A block contract underwrites your fixed costs, lets you recruit permanently rather than casually, and makes financial planning possible.
The trade-off is exposure. You’ve committed staff and capacity to a rate agreed at bid stage. If the National Living Wage rises, if fuel costs jump, if a service user’s needs escalate, you absorb it unless the contract says otherwise. Read the uplift and variation clauses more carefully than you read the specification.
Who it suits
Block contracts suit established providers with the operational maturity to deliver consistently at a fixed rate, and the financial modelling capability to price them correctly.
They’re dangerous for providers who price optimistically to win. A three-year contract at a rate that doesn’t cover your true cost base isn’t a win. It’s a slow, contractual loss.
Spot Purchase
What it is
The commissioner buys individual packages as need arises, usually at a rate you’ve agreed or negotiated, with no volume commitment on either side.
What it actually pays
Flexibility, at a price. Spot work can be lucrative, particularly for complex packages the block providers can’t staff, and it requires almost no bidding investment.
But it’s unpredictable, administratively heavy, and gives you no security whatsoever. Commissioners increasingly move spend away from spot purchase toward frameworks and dynamic markets precisely because it’s expensive for them.
Who it suits
Spot purchase suits providers starting out, providers with genuine specialist capability, and providers filling capacity between contracts. It’s a reasonable revenue stream. It’s a poor strategy.
If most of your income is spot, you’re a subcontractor to the commissioner’s crisis, not a partner in their commissioning plan.
Choosing by Stage, Not by Ambition
The right route depends less on what you want than on where you are.
Early-stage providers should pursue dynamic markets and selective spot work. Build evidence, build references, build a CQC rating that won’t disqualify you later. Don’t spend £4,000 of staff time bidding for a framework you can’t yet evidence your way onto.
Growing providers with two or three years of matched delivery evidence should target frameworks and open frameworks, using dynamic market call-offs as the case studies that make those bids credible. This is the pivot point, and it’s where most providers stall, because they keep bidding for what they’ve always bid for.
Established providers should pursue block contracts and lead positions on frameworks, using their scale to price competitively and their track record to score well. They should be selective, not opportunistic.
At every stage, the discipline is the same: qualify before you commit. Understanding your genuine fit for an opportunity, before you invest weeks in it, is exactly what the Tender Match Score and Bid Health Score in the BIDsuite platform are built to tell you.
The Portfolio View
The strongest care providers don’t choose one route. They build a portfolio.
Block contracts underwrite the fixed cost base. Framework and dynamic market call-offs provide growth and margin. Spot purchase absorbs spare capacity and tests new service lines. Each mitigates the weakness of the others.
What they don’t do is stumble into that portfolio by chasing whatever appears on Find a Tender that month. They plan it, three years out, deciding which frameworks matter, when they reopen, and what evidence they need to have accumulated by then.
That’s the difference between a provider who bids and a provider with a commissioning strategy. The first wins contracts. The second builds a business.
Our case studies show what the second looks like: providers who moved from spot work to dynamic market call-offs to framework places, deliberately, over a few years, rather than hoping the right tender would come along.
Before your next bid, ask a different question. Not “can we win this?” but “does winning this take us where we’re going?”
Need support with tenders or compliance? AssuredBID helps UK social care providers prepare stronger bids and win the right opportunities.
You can book a consultation with our tender experts, explore our services, and follow AssuredBID on social media for practical updates, insights, and guidance you can actually use.
You can also explore the BIDsuite platform to find the right tenders and check your chances of winning.
