Are you looking to bid for public cleaning contracts but don’t really know where to start? Perhaps you have looked at government tenders before and decided they were simply too big, too complicated or designed for the large facilities management companies. If so, there is a new government framework worth knowing about, but perhaps more importantly, it gives us a good reason to look at how a small cleaning company can actually start selling to the public sector.

The Government Commercial Agency has awarded its new Facilities Management and Security Services framework, RM6378, with a planned go-live date of 18 September 2026. The framework covers a wide range of FM services, including cleaning, waste, building maintenance, catering, reception and security, and will be available to public-sector organisations looking to buy these services.

At first sight, something like this can feel a long way from the world of a small cleaning company with perhaps five, ten or twenty cleaners. But public procurement is changing too. The Procurement Act 2023 was partly designed to make public procurement more accessible, including removing some barriers faced by smaller businesses and making frameworks more open.

That does not mean winning government contracts has suddenly become easy. It means small cleaning businesses should understand the routes available to them and start preparing.

Don’t start by trying to win the biggest contract

One of the easiest mistakes to make is finding a huge cleaning or FM tender and thinking that entering public procurement means competing for it.

It doesn’t.

If you currently clean ten offices around Derby, Nottingham or Leicester, your first objective probably shouldn’t be to clean hundreds of government buildings across the country. Look for something that resembles the work you already know how to deliver. That might be a school, council building, small public office, community facility or a regional lot within a larger procurement.

The question shouldn’t be, “How do I win a government contract?” It should be, “What public contract could my business realistically deliver well?”

Start there.

First, make sure your business is ready to be examined

Public-sector customers need to know that the supplier they appoint can actually deliver what it promises. This means having your business information in order before you become excited about writing bids.

Your insurance, accounts and financial information should be accessible. Your health and safety arrangements, employment processes, Right to Work checks, training records and relevant cleaning procedures should be properly documented. Depending on the contract, buyers may also want evidence around safeguarding, environmental practices, quality management, business continuity, data protection and previous contract performance.

You don’t necessarily need every accreditation you have ever heard of before bidding for anything. Requirements vary between contracts, and spending thousands of pounds collecting badges before understanding what your target customers actually require isn’t necessarily good preparation.

Instead, start building a procurement folder. Put your policies, certificates, insurance documents, accounts, training records, references, case studies and evidence of performance somewhere you can find them easily. Then when an opportunity appears, you aren’t starting from nothing.

Get yourself onto the systems where opportunities appear

A very practical first step is registering your organisation on Find a Tender, the Government’s central digital platform for public procurement. Registration is free, and suppliers can store core business information for reuse and set alerts for opportunities they may be interested in.

For businesses operating in England, Contracts Finder is also useful, particularly when looking for lower-value opportunities. It allows businesses to search opportunities, see what may be coming and study contracts that have already been awarded.

Don’t just search for the word cleaning. Try terms such as commercial cleaning, building cleaning, soft FM, facilities management, janitorial, deep cleaning, window cleaning and the specialist services your company provides. Search your own region too.

More importantly, set alerts. Looking for contracts should become a routine rather than something you remember to do once every six months.

Study contracts you didn’t win, and even contracts you never entered

This is one of the easiest ways to learn procurement without risking anything.

Contracts Finder and Find a Tender contain information about previous procurements and contract awards. Look at cleaning contracts around your area. Who bought the service? How large was it? Who won? How long is the contract? Was it divided into lots?

Then start looking ahead. Find a Tender includes pipeline and procurement notices that can tell suppliers about what public bodies intend to buy before the final tender arrives.

If you discover that a council’s cleaning contract may be renewed next year, that gives you time to prepare. Waiting until the tender appears and discovering you have three weeks to get everything together puts a small business at an immediate disadvantage.

You don’t always have to win the main contract

This is particularly important when looking at something as large as the new RM6378 framework.

A small cleaning business shouldn’t assume its only choices are either winning a huge government contract directly or having no involvement at all. Larger FM businesses need supply chains too.

A national contractor may need regional cleaning capacity, specialist carpet or floor cleaning, emergency cover, window cleaning, deep cleaning, temporary labour or expertise in particular environments. A small business that knows its region well and can respond quickly may have something useful to offer.

So when you see that a major contractor has won public work in your area, don’t just think, they got the contract, so that’s the end of the opportunity.

Find out who they are. Understand what they have won. Look at their supplier arrangements and ask whether your business could become part of their local supply chain.

Sometimes the route into public-sector cleaning may be through the company that won the contract rather than directly through the public body that awarded it.

Your existing cleaning contracts are building your evidence

If you eventually want to win public work, start treating the contracts you already have as evidence.

Don’t simply say, “We provide a high-quality cleaning service.” Almost every cleaning company says that.

Record something.

How quickly do you respond to customer issues? What are your inspection results? How successfully did you mobilise a new site? Have complaints reduced? How long do cleaners stay with you? What training have you delivered? Have you helped a customer reduce chemical use or waste? Can a customer provide a reference?

This connects directly with something we discussed recently on CleanBow: cleaning is increasingly about performance, not simply appearance.

A cleaning company that has spent two years recording what it does well has a much stronger story to tell when a tender asks for evidence than a company trying to remember everything the night before submission.

Don’t ignore social value because you are small

Public procurement increasingly considers wider value alongside the service being purchased, and this is one area where smaller cleaning companies sometimes underestimate what they already contribute.

Perhaps most of your cleaners live locally. Perhaps you give people their first opportunity back into employment, train workers who previously had few qualifications, provide work experience, use local suppliers or have reduced waste and chemical consumption.

Those things can matter.

But don’t turn social value into a page of promises because you think that’s what government wants to hear. If you say you will create jobs, train people or reduce environmental impact, think about how you will actually do it and how you will demonstrate afterwards that it happened.

A smaller cleaning company may not be able to promise hundreds of apprenticeships. It may be able to promise two opportunities locally and actually deliver them.

Learn when to walk away from a tender

Winning public contracts can be exciting, but bidding costs money even when nobody sends you an invoice.

Every hour you spend preparing a bid is an hour somebody isn’t spending elsewhere in the business.

Before bidding, look carefully at the contract value, geography, staffing requirements, insurance levels, financial requirements, mobilisation period, mandatory accreditations and any TUPE information. Ask yourself whether you could genuinely start and finance the contract if you won it.

A £1 million contract isn’t necessarily an opportunity for a £150,000 cleaning business. It could become the thing that overwhelms it.

There is nothing wrong with reading a tender and deciding not yet.

Use it to understand what your business would need to become before you could compete for something similar in two years.

Give yourself 90 days to start

If public-sector cleaning is something you want your business to move into, you don’t need to spend tomorrow writing a tender. Spend the first month getting your procurement folder together, registering on Find a Tender, setting alerts and identifying the councils, schools, NHS organisations and other public bodies within the area you can realistically serve.

During the second month, study previous contracts and upcoming opportunities. Find out who currently provides cleaning services to those organisations and when those contracts might end. Look at larger FM companies operating locally and investigate whether they work with smaller suppliers. Attend supplier engagement events when relevant opportunities appear.

By the third month, you should have a much clearer picture of the market. Build two or three good case studies from work you already perform, organise your evidence and choose one realistic opportunity to study properly. You may decide to bid. You may decide you’re not ready. Either outcome is useful because you now know what needs to change.

CleanBow Perspective

The arrival of another huge government FM framework can make public procurement look like a world built entirely for enormous companies.

It doesn’t have to be viewed that way.

The Procurement Act changes are intended, among other things, to make it easier for smaller businesses to participate, with more transparent opportunities, more flexible frameworks and measures intended to reduce some of the barriers SMEs face. That doesn’t guarantee anybody a contract, and small cleaning businesses still need to prove they can deliver.

You don’t need to become a national facilities management company before you can work with the public sector. You need to become a credible supplier at the scale you can actually deliver.

So if you have always looked at public cleaning contracts and thought that’s not for businesses like mine, perhaps don’t start by bidding.

Start by looking.

Register, study what is being bought around you, understand what successful suppliers are expected to demonstrate and gradually build your business towards it.

Your first public cleaning contract doesn’t need to transform your company overnight. It simply needs to be one you can win, deliver properly and then use as evidence to win the next one.