CPV 85-3 Social work services

About CPV 85-3

CPV 85-3 is the Common Procurement Vocabulary group covering social work and related services. It is, in practice, the local authority care market: the services councils commission to discharge their statutory duties to adults and children.

The group covers domiciliary and home care, residential and nursing home placements, supported living and extra care, day services, children's residential care, fostering and adoption support, family support and early help, advocacy, and community and welfare services.

It behaves differently from almost every other procurement market because demand is individual and unpredictable. A council cannot know how many care packages of a given type it will need next year, so it rarely buys a defined quantity. Instead it establishes approved provider arrangements and calls off against them as individual needs arise, which means winning a place on the arrangement and winning actual work are two separate commercial problems.

Active CPV 85-3 tenders

Live activity is dominated by the re-establishment of framework and dynamic purchasing arrangements. Most upper-tier authorities refresh these every three to five years, and many operate permanently open arrangements that admit new providers continuously, because capacity shortage is the sector's defining constraint.

Children's services procurement is increasingly regional. Individual authorities lack the placement volume to run efficient arrangements alone, so consortia commission across several councils at once, which raises the scale of the opportunity and the bar for entry.

Active sub-category	Typical procurement route	Primary buyer pattern
Domiciliary and home care	Zoned framework, multi-provider	Upper-tier or unitary council
Residential and nursing placements	Dynamic purchasing system	Council or regional consortium
Supported living and extra care	Framework with individual call-off	Council, often with health
Children's residential and fostering	Regional consortium framework	Council consortium
Advocacy and community support	Light touch open procedure	Council or integrated board

Top buyers procuring CPV 85-3

The buyers are the roughly 150 authorities with social care responsibility, plus the regional consortia they form. In our own corpus the City of Edinburgh Council, West Dunbartonshire Council, Dundee City Council, Westminster City Council, South Ayrshire Council, and Derry City and Strabane District Council are among the more frequent publishers under this group.

Structure varies across the United Kingdom in ways that matter commercially. In Scotland, health and social care integration means much adult care is commissioned through integration joint boards combining council and health budgets. In Northern Ireland, health and social care are integrated within the same trusts, so the buyer is a health trust rather than a council. Providers operating across nations should not assume the English commissioning model applies.

Typical contract values under CPV 85-3

The median notice sits above a million pounds, which reflects the multi-year, multi-provider nature of care frameworks rather than the size of any individual award. This is the division where headline values most badly overstate the opportunity to a single supplier.

A domiciliary care framework advertised across four years, several geographic zones, and dozens of providers distributes according to referral patterns that no bidder can predict at tender. Realised income depends on capacity, geographic coverage, and the relationship with the brokerage team placing individual packages. At the other extreme, individual placements for complex needs can be very high value per person and are frequently arranged outside any framework as spot purchases when no approved provider can meet the need.

Compliance and certifications for CPV 85-3 bidders

Regulatory registration is a threshold requirement, not a differentiator. Providers of regulated activities must be registered with the Care Quality Commission in England, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland, Care Inspectorate Wales, or the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority in Northern Ireland. Current inspection ratings are used as pass or fail gates in most competitions, and a rating below good frequently disqualifies regardless of price.

Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks are required for all client-facing staff, with equivalent arrangements in the devolved nations. Safeguarding policies must align to local multi-agency arrangements, and buyers check that they name the local procedures rather than generic ones. Workforce terms have become a scored issue rather than a background one: real living wage accreditation, payment for travel time in domiciliary care, zero-hours contract use, and staff turnover rates all now feature in evaluation, driven by commissioner concern about capacity and quality. Providers should expect to evidence these with figures rather than assertions.

Frequently asked questions

Why does framework approval not lead to work?

Because approval only makes a provider eligible. Individual packages are then placed by brokerage teams according to who has capacity in the right place at the right time, at the right price band, for the specific need. Providers who succeed after approval invest in the relationship with brokerage, respond quickly to referrals, and are honest about what they can and cannot take, because a provider that repeatedly declines referrals stops being called. Providers who treat framework admission as the end of the sales process typically see very little volume.

How do I break in as a new provider?

Specialisation is the most reliable route. Commissioners have persistent difficulty placing people with complex needs, challenging behaviour, or specific clinical requirements, and a provider who can take those placements is used quickly and repeatedly regardless of track record with that council. General provision is crowded and referral allocation favours incumbents with proven reliability. Many authorities also keep dynamic purchasing systems permanently open, which removes the timing barrier and means a new provider does not need to wait for a recompetition.

Is this market covered by the light touch regime?

Most of it, yes. Social and other specific services including social care fall within the light touch regime, which sets a considerably higher financial threshold before full procurement obligations apply and gives buyers substantial freedom to design their own process. That is why procedures in this group vary so widely between councils. Above the threshold the buyer must still advertise and must still treat providers equally and transparently, but the shape of the process is theirs to determine, so a provider should read each set of instructions carefully rather than assuming familiarity.

How does health and social care integration affect who I sell to?

Considerably, and it varies by nation. In Scotland, integration joint boards commission adult services with pooled council and NHS budgets, so the buyer and the decision-making structure differ from England. In Northern Ireland, health and social care trusts commission both. In England, integration is more variable: some services are jointly commissioned through pooled budgets with an integrated care board, others remain purely council-commissioned. Providers should establish who actually holds the budget for a given service locally, because the answer changes the buyer, the procurement route, and often the contract terms.