Transport Contracts and Tenders

Transport procurement covers home-to-school and SEND transport routes, local bus and school bus services, taxis and private hire, minibuses with passenger assistants, and staff and patient transport. Transport planning and strategy work for the Department for Transport, Transport Scotland and combined authorities also appears, along with bus shelter and interchange programmes.

Stotles brings together transport 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 school transport route awards appear on Contracts Finder, and councils run the route mini-competitions through their own transport dynamic purchasing systems.

Getting council transport work starts with joining the council's passenger transport dynamic purchasing system, then bidding for the routes that fit your vehicles and base. Councils need the right operator and private hire licensing, suitable vehicles including wheelchair-accessible ones, and trained passenger assistants for SEND routes.

Bus and coach operators need a PSV operator's licence, and taxi and private hire work needs vehicles and drivers licensed by the council. Councils joining operators to a transport dynamic purchasing system also check insurance, vehicle standards and safeguarding arrangements for drivers and passenger assistants. Under the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers can be excluded for certain criminal convictions, insolvency or failure to pay tax.

Councils such as Suffolk County Council and Leicester City Council award school and SEND transport route by route through a dynamic purchasing system. Operators join the system once, then bid for individual routes in mini-competitions that set the vehicle size, wheelchair access or the need for a passenger assistant. Each route is a separate award notice, which is why transport notices run into the thousands.

County and unitary councils are the largest buyers of transport, through home-to-school and SEND transport. Combined authorities buy bus services and infrastructure, NHS trusts buy patient transport, and the Department for Transport, Transport Scotland and National Highways buy planning and technical support.

School and SEND transport routes usually run to the end of the academic year or for one to two years before they are re-let. Local bus service contracts and larger transport contracts run for longer terms.

Watch for dynamic purchasing system onboarding windows, school transport route reviews before each academic year, bus service improvement plans and local transport plans, which show transport work coming due. 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 60000000 (Transport services (excl. Waste transport)), 60170000 (Hire of passenger transport vehicles with driver), 60120000 (Taxi services), 60112000 (Public road transport services) and 60130000 (Special-purpose road passenger-transport services).