CPV 77 Agricultural forestry horticultural services

About CPV 77

CPV 77 is the Common Procurement Vocabulary division covering agricultural, forestry, horticultural, aquacultural, and apicultural services. In UK public procurement it is predominantly the land management division: keeping green space in usable condition.

The division covers grounds maintenance and grass cutting, tree surgery and arboriculture, woodland and forest management, planting and landscaping maintenance, hedge and verge management, weed control, sports pitch maintenance, cemetery and churchyard grounds, and habitat and conservation management.

It is one of the more accessible divisions for small and regional businesses. The work is inherently local, requires equipment and skilled operatives rather than large capital or regulatory infrastructure, and is frequently divided geographically so that no single contractor needs county-wide capacity.

Active CPV 77 tenders

Grounds maintenance contracts are the largest recurring stream, procured by councils, housing providers, universities, and NHS trusts on three to five year cycles. They are frequently lotted by area or by asset type, with parks, housing land, highways verges, and cemeteries sometimes let separately.

Tree management has grown as a distinct stream, driven by ash dieback, by the survey and inspection obligations that follow from landowner liability, and by tree planting commitments. Habitat and conservation management is procured by environmental bodies and increasingly by councils delivering biodiversity obligations.

Active sub-category	Typical procurement route	Primary buyer pattern
Grounds maintenance and grass cutting	Area-lotted term contract	Council or housing provider
Tree surgery and arboriculture	Framework or term contract	Council, highways authority, estate
Woodland and forest management	Long-term management contract	Forestry body or land manager
Habitat and conservation management	Bespoke or grant-funded contract	Conservation body or council
Sports pitch and specialist turf	Specialist competition	Council, school, sports body

Top buyers procuring CPV 77

In our own corpus Forestry and Land Scotland is by a wide margin the most frequent publisher under this code, reflecting its role managing the national forest estate, followed by Surrey County Council, Natural Resources Wales, Natural England, Newry Mourne and Down District Council, and the Forestry Commission.

That pattern shows the division's two halves clearly. National land management bodies procure forestry operations, habitat work, and estate management at scale across large holdings. Local authorities procure grounds maintenance for parks, housing land, highways, and cemeteries. Housing associations, universities, and NHS trusts form a substantial third group buying maintenance for their own estates.

Typical contract values under CPV 77

The median notice sits under four hundred thousand pounds, one of the lowest of any division covered here, and the upper decile stays in the low tens of millions rather than reaching the extremes seen in construction or energy. This is a division of many moderate contracts rather than a few enormous ones.

That distribution is what makes it accessible. A grounds maintenance lot covering part of a borough for three years is a real and winnable contract for a business with a handful of teams, and it provides the recurring revenue that makes equipment investment viable. Tree surgery term contracts are frequently smaller still, and habitat and conservation work is often commissioned below threshold.

Compliance and certifications for CPV 77 bidders

Operative competence is the central requirement and it is certificate-based. Chainsaw and tree work requires the relevant certificates of competence for the specific operations, including aerial work and felling above defined sizes, and buyers check these against the operatives proposed. Pesticide application requires the appropriate certification for the product and method, and records must be maintained.

Safety scheme accreditation through CHAS, SafeContractor, or an equivalent is standard. Tree work attracts requirements around compliance with the relevant British Standard for tree work and, for inspection contracts, appropriate arboricultural qualification for surveyors. Work affecting protected species or designated sites requires ecological competence and, where relevant, licences, and buyers increasingly require method statements addressing nesting birds, bats, and protected habitats as a matter of course rather than only on sensitive sites. Waste carrier registration is required for removing arisings. Suppliers should also expect biodiversity and pesticide reduction commitments to be scored, as many councils have adopted policies restricting herbicide use and requiring management for biodiversity rather than for tidiness.

Frequently asked questions

How do grounds maintenance contracts get divided up?

Most commonly by geography, with a borough or county split into areas, and sometimes additionally by asset type, separating parks from housing land from highways verges from cemeteries. Buyers lot deliberately to keep smaller contractors in the market and to avoid depending on a single supplier for the whole area. For a bidder the first task on any notice is to understand the lotting, because a contract that looks too large as a whole is frequently winnable as one or two lots, and buyers often cap the number of lots any one supplier can hold.

Has the move away from herbicides changed the work?

Considerably, and it is one of the clearest examples of a specification changing because of public and political pressure rather than cost. Many councils have restricted or eliminated glyphosate use in public spaces, which replaces a cheap chemical operation with more frequent mechanical or manual work, or with accepting more growth. That changes cost, resourcing, and the standards against which performance is measured. Contractors bidding on historic assumptions about weed control method will misprice, and buyers increasingly ask directly how a contractor will meet the standard without chemical treatment.

Is tree work a separate market from grounds maintenance?

Largely yes. Arboriculture requires different competence, different equipment, and different insurance, and it carries a higher risk profile that buyers treat separately. Many authorities let tree work as a standalone term contract or framework rather than bundling it into grounds maintenance. Ash dieback has driven a sustained programme of surveying and felling that has kept this market busy, and inspection work, which requires qualified surveyors rather than climbing teams, is a distinct and growing sub-market attached to landowner liability.

What does biodiversity net gain mean for this division?

It is creating a new stream of long-term management work. Where development must deliver a measurable biodiversity uplift, that uplift has to be maintained and monitored for many years, and someone must be contracted to do it. Councils and land managers are beginning to procure that long-term habitat management, and the contracts are unusual in public procurement for their duration. Contractors with ecological capability alongside conventional grounds skills are well placed, and this is one of the few genuinely new opportunity types in an otherwise mature division.