Agency Contracts and Tenders

Agency staff contracts cover temporary and agency workforce supply only: a buyer bringing in staff through a recruitment or staffing agency to cover a vacancy, absence or short-term need.

Stotles brings together agency staff tenders and contracts from 100+ portals into one search, so you do not have to check each portal separately, and you can set alerts for new opportunities across the UK and Ireland.

If you want to search the government portals directly, Find a Tender carries higher-value contracts across the UK and Contracts Finder carries lower-value contracts in England. Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Ireland's eTenders covers Irish public bodies, and many councils, NHS bodies and housing associations publish on their own e-tendering portals such as ProContract. Most agency staffing is called off from national frameworks such as the NHS Workforce Alliance and TUCO staffing frameworks, or runs through a managed service provider, so many opportunities reach only agencies already on them.

Agency staff tenders are scored on fill rates, candidate quality and compliance checks, response times, account management and mark-up rates. Most buyers use frameworks or managed services, so a framework place or a place on the managed service supply chain usually comes first.

Staffing agencies must comply with the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 and the Agency Workers Regulations 2010, and workers in schools, health and care need the right DBS checks. Tenders usually set minimum insurance cover, check financial standing and ask for evidence of similar contracts at selection stage. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

Often, yes. A large share of agency staff contracts are call-offs against a managed-service provider or a preferred-supplier list rather than a fresh open tender each time. A school trust or council typically holds its own staffing panel alongside any national arrangement. Contract shape tends to follow the same pattern regardless of size: a core panel of agencies on call, topped up by direct approaches when a role is hard to fill.

Councils, NHS trusts, colleges, academy trusts and housing associations account for most of the volume, typically covering admin and clerical roles, teaching and learning-support staff, and manual or grounds positions. Central government departments and their arm's-length bodies also run large multi-supplier arrangements spanning admin, technical and manual roles at once, usually procured through a shared framework rather than department by department.

Read workforce plans, agency spend reviews, staffing framework renewal dates and expiry dates for existing managed service contracts, which show agency staff work coming due ahead of a notice. On Stotles you can track those signals and the buyers behind them, then follow a notice from pre-tender through to award.

The two codes that recur most in agency staff procurement are 79620000 (Supply services of personnel including temporary staff) and 79600000 (Recruitment services). Buyers use both fairly interchangeably depending on whether a notice is framed as a supply of staff or a recruitment service. Related codes also appear for specific worker types, including 79623000 (Supply services of commercial or industrial workers) and 79621000 (Supply services of office personnel).