200 suppliers signing up to Contracts Finder every week

The Contracts Finder platform, which makes it easier for small businesses to find opportunities to supply to government, now has more than 22,000 registered suppliers, with almost two-thirds of them small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - a 53 per cent increase since the beginning of this year.

The site now regularly features more contract notices than TED, the EU procurement portal, with around 200 suppliers signing up to use the platform every week.

Contracts Finder, managed by the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) as part of the Cabinet Office, aims to increase procurement transparency and provide more opportunities for SMEs to supply goods and services to the public sector.

Automatic email alerts are distributed to interested suppliers, with suppliers able to tailor their searches to deliver news about opportunities in their own specialism.

Contracts Finder supports the UK government’s commitment to the Open Data Contracting Standard (ODCS), ensuring that all stages of the public procurement process are open and transparent.

The UK is the first G7 country to implement the ODCS for contracts administered by a central purchasing authority - CVD.

This means that the whole process of awarding public sector contracts is visible to the public for the first time.

Caroline Nokes, minister for government resilience and efficiency, said: “Contracts Finder is a great way for small and medium sized businesses to search for opportunities in central government and the wider public sector. Smaller businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and I am keen that they are able to access as many opportunities as possible, helping the government to achieve our aspiration of spending £1 in every £3 with SMEs by 2022.”

Ian Fyshwick, chief executive of Adept Telecom, commercial director for Innopsis, and member of the Cabinet Office SME Panel, said: “Almost all public sector buyers are now registered to use the service including councils, emergency services, central government, universities and the NHS. We are closer than ever to having a single website where you can find the bulk of public sector tenders.”

Emma Jones, Small Business Crown Representative, said: “Contracts Finder is the go-to place for SMEs to find government and public sector opportunities. More and more organisations are using it with twice as many UK opportunities published when compared with the TED website. I’d urge SMEs to log on for free and find out what opportunities are out there. We’d like to see the platform go even further and become the single location on which government’s major suppliers also list their opportunities, whilst making performance data on existing contracts more transparent.”