Tender writing for contracts, commissioned services and frameworks
The tenders you should bid for, and the answers written
1 or 2 full tenders a month, from £1,950 a month. A response your own team has written, checked before it goes on the portal, is £550 to £950.
A month of tenders, from £1,950 a month
Retained bid support is a rolling monthly arrangement from £1,950 a month, with no minimum term. We write the applications from your own evidence, look for the funds and tenders that fit what you do, and come back to you only for what is missing.
For a company that means the portals and the contract finders watched all month. A call you cannot meet on a pass-or-fail requirement comes off the list. That happens before you spend a day on it.
The tender subscriptions say plainly what they will not do. The dearest of them states that it is not a bid writing tool. Another caps the bids it will draft in a month. The evidence is still yours to supply. So is the choice of which bids to make. Checking the answers and pressing submit stay with you. One sells the right to ask a bid writer a question. Hiring that writer is priced separately, at a discount.
What a subscription leaves on your desk is the notices. A consultancy month is a document, or two. The fee here buys the answers themselves, written against the published criteria, ready to go on the portal.
| What the month includes | In a year | |
|---|---|---|
| £1,950 a month | 1 full tender, or 2 shorter responses | 12 in a year |
| £2,950 a month | 2 full tenders | 24 in a year |
1 full tender a month is 12, and 2 a month is 24 in a year. Count the tenders you saw last year and let go, and that is the number a band is aimed at.
Above the top band, a month is priced individually.
The fee here buys the answers themselves, written against the published criteria, ready to go on the portal.
Every answer written for you goes into a library you own, and the next tender is written from it. So the second month asks less of your team than the first.
The founding offer
For your first three months the entry band carries everything the band above it carries, at the entry price. That is £1,000 a month less. What follows it is written into your agreement before you sign anything.
The win bonus
On a win there is one more fee. It is agreed before any work starts and invoiced when the award letter arrives. The amount is fixed and printed below, so it goes into your bid budget before you commit.
| Payable on the award | |
|---|---|
| First year under £100,000 | £1,500 |
| First year £100,000 to £250,000 | £3,000 |
| First year more than £250,000 | £5,000 |
What sits outside a band, how it ends and whether there is a place open are on the retained support page.
What happens after I send the pack?
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You get the fee and whether to bid at all
Send the tender documents and the submission deadline, and the selection questionnaire and the evaluation criteria get read first. If there's a pass-or-fail requirement you can't meet, or a weighting that makes the contract a poor fit, that comes back before any fee is agreed. That read is free, and the reply carries the fee and the dates.
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An hour to an hour and a half on a call
We ask for your last two or three similar contracts, what you delivered and what the client said, your policies and certificates list, and your numbers. If the delivery detail runs deep there's a second short session.
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The response comes back and you upload it
The pricing schedule is totalled again and the compliance list is checked. You put it through the portal yourselves, because your logins stay with you.
Tender writing against the criteria, £2,500 to £5,000
Tender writing here is the quality answers, the method statements and the social value section, written from your delivery record and your numbers against the evaluation criteria and their weightings. Word limits and the portal deadline are held.
If you lost the last one on the quality score, the answer that cost the marks was most likely a good answer to a question the evaluator wasn't asking.
Word limits and the portal deadline are held.
So every answer here is written under the criterion it's scored on, with the weighting in view, out of your delivery record and your numbers. The PQQ or selection questionnaire, the compliance checklist and every date come as a list at the start.
A small tender with a handful of quality questions is £500 to £2,500 on the same terms. Everything written is yours on delivery, standing answers included. That covers council contracts, NHS and housing association tenders, commissioned services and framework places, anywhere in the UK.
Your team's draft, checked against the weightings, £550 to £950
A bid review is an independent read of a funding application or tender response you've already written, held line by line against the funder's or the buyer's published criteria.
If your team has written the response, send it with the pack. It comes back marked up. The changes come in the order that moves the score most.
A review covers one read against the published criteria. Your budget or your pricing schedule is checked line by line, and the weakest answers come back named with the fix for each. One round of the changes you pick is made for you inside the fee, and anything wanted after that is quoted first.
One UK charity bought a £5,000 engagement and has kept us on a monthly retainer since. The whole engagement, and what the first read of their papers caught, is on the case study page.
The questions companies ask before they hire a tender writer
How much does a bid writer cost?
Here, £2,500 to £5,000 for a full tender with method statements and social value. A small one is £500 to £2,500. Checking a response your team has written is £550 to £950.
How do I know if my business is ready to tender?
Read the selection questionnaire before anything else, because it sets the pass-or-fail requirements, usually accounts, insurance levels, references and policies, and if you can't meet one of those no amount of writing fixes it. Send the pack and you get that read before any fee is agreed.
Can a bid writer guarantee a win?
No, because the evaluator decides, and price usually carries part of the score.
What if the deadline moves?
If the buyer brings it forward, you get a straight list of what can still be done, and you decide. If it's pushed back, nothing changes and the fee stays where it is.
Will you submit it for us?
No, you upload it through the portal yourselves, because your logins stay with you.
Whether AI is used, and what happens to your material, are answered on the FAQ page in a sentence each.
What does it cost?
Each fee is for the finished document.
| What it is | Fee |
|---|---|
| Bid reviewThe bid you've written, checked against the criteria before it goes in, with one round of the changes you choose made inside the fee. | £550 to £950 |
| Grant application or small tender, writtenWritten from your evidence against the buyer's criteria and ready to submit, with the decisions that are yours listed at the end. | £500 to £2,500 |
| Full tender, writtenQuality answers, method statements and social value written against the criteria and weightings, with the compliance list. | £2,500 to £5,000 |
| Retained bid supportThe funds and tenders that fit you, found every month, with a set number of applications written from your evidence. | from £1,950 a month |
| A free read on whether to bidSend the guidance or the tender pack with the deadline, and you get a price and a plain yes or no on bidding. | Free |
The fee is fixed first. You pay on delivery, and on a first job nothing is due before that. The fees here are what you pay, and there is no VAT to add.
Every fee is on the pricing page. If yours is a grant application, the charity page carries the same three steps.
Send the pack and get a fixed fee back
Link the tender notice or paste the pack in, put in the submission deadline, say what you've drafted so far, and the fee comes back with whether the tender is worth bidding for.