Domiciliary Care Contracts and Tenders

Domiciliary care procurement covers care and support delivered in people's own homes: home care visits, live-in care, night sitting, reablement and short breaks for children and adults. Councils also buy supported living, complex care and intermediate care alongside it, and Scottish councils buy care at home under their own framework and procured services arrangements.

Stotles brings together domiciliary care 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. Many councils let domiciliary care through their own frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems, so individual placements and call-offs often appear only as award notices or on the council's own portal.

Domiciliary care tenders are scored on quality as well as price, so bids set out how you recruit and keep care workers, manage rotas and travel time, handle medication and safeguarding, and monitor the quality of visits. Many councils let care through an open framework or dynamic purchasing system, so the first step is usually getting onto it and then winning packages as they are offered.

Providers of personal care in England must be registered with the Care Quality Commission, and care in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is regulated by the Care Inspectorate, Care Inspectorate Wales and the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority. 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.

Mostly through frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems that councils open for new providers at set points, with individual care packages then placed with approved providers by lot or area. Large open tenders for a whole area, and block contracts for specialist services such as live-in or complex care, are the other common routes.

Domiciliary care is often bought through frameworks that individual councils set up for themselves rather than national ones. Hampshire County Council's open home care framework, developed with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board, is one example: it stays open for new providers to join, and the council runs call-offs under it for reablement and short-term personal care, community care and support, and extra care housing.

CCS's G-Cloud framework sits alongside as a route for the technology around home care. Councils such as Northumberland County Council and Cumberland Council have called off from it for home care monitoring systems and electronic rostering for reablement, in one case by direct award.

Councils with adult social care and children's services duties are the main buyers. NHS integrated care boards buy home-based health and intermediate care, and Scottish councils and health and social care partnerships commission care at home. Several ICBs have run their own live-in and complex care frameworks.

Watch council market position statements, provider engagement notices and framework reopening dates, which show care 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 core codes are 85000000 (Health and social work services), 85300000 (Social work and related services) and 85312000 (Social work services without accommodation). Related care contracts also carry 98000000 (Other community, social and personal services), 85100000 (Health services) and 85323000 (Community health services).