Ask any yard in Britain what does my company need to get more work UK buyers actually award, and the answer comes back as "better marketing" or "sharper pricing". It is neither. We swept 557 UK buyer and portal gates - housing associations, councils, tier-one main contractors, insurance repair networks and maintenance marketplaces - and recorded what each demands before a contractor can see a job, let alone quote it. Barely any ask for a price at that stage. They ask for documents. Your paperwork is the first filter, and most firms fail it silently, never knowing the opportunity existed.
What does my company need to get more work UK-wide? Paperwork first, price second
Buying decisions start with a compliance screen run by someone in procurement who has never met you, often automated. Just under half the gates we mapped (253 of 557) accept an open, self-serve registration - the rest sit behind a platform, an invitation or a paid membership. Getting through the open ones costs time and PDFs, not luck.
Below are the nine things UK buyers check, roughly in the order they check them. Each exists for a reason, and each unlocks a different slice of the market.
The nine gates every UK buyer checks
1. Company identity
Legal name exactly as it appears at Companies House, company number, registered office, legal structure and incorporation date. Roughly one in seven gates asks for a company registration number explicitly, but every one of them can look you up for free. Buyers use this to confirm you exist, check how long you have traded and spot late filings. Fix your Companies House record before anything else - an overdue confirmation statement reads as distress to a procurement officer, and it is the cheapest red flag you will ever clear.
2. Tax and finance
VAT number (captured by around 22% of gates), Corporation Tax UTR, CIS registration and status, PAYE reference, bank details and three years of turnover. Nearly 46% of gates assess financials in some form. Two things matter most: CIS gross payment status, which main contractors prefer because it removes deductions from their admin, and turnover history, because frameworks routinely cap bid value at a multiple of it. For why turnover caps your ceiling, Construction Arbitrage is good reading.
3. Insurance at the level asked, not the legal minimum
Around 44% of gates reference insurance and about a quarter state a monetary threshold. Public liability appears most often, followed by professional indemnity wherever design or advice is involved. Employers' liability is legally compulsory at £5m for anyone with employees, but £5m alone fails plenty of PQQs that specify £10m. Keep certificates as PDFs with policy numbers and expiry dates, and keep your broker's number to hand - raising a limit for a specific bid is usually one phone call.
4. A health and safety pack that survives inspection
Just under a third of gates want something on health and safety; around 15% want the written policy specifically. With five or more employees it is a legal requirement anyway. Assessors check the review date, so a policy signed three years ago fails. Build the pack once: signed and dated policy, a named competent H&S advisor or retained consultancy, a blank RAMS template plus two or three completed real examples, accident and RIDDOR figures for three years (zero is a fine answer, a blank is not), a training matrix per operative, and current asbestos awareness certificates for anyone entering pre-2000 buildings.
5. One SSIP badge
The single highest-leverage purchase on the list. Of the 557 gates we mapped, 148 reference SSIP - 26.6%, just over one in four. Because SSIP members mutually recognise each other's assessments, you buy one badge, not four. SMAS, CHAS, SafeContractor and Acclaim all sit under the umbrella; pricing differs sharply and is banded by headcount, so get quotes for your actual employee count. Which scheme to pick depends on who you chase: some large maintenance providers hard-require a specific one, while local authorities lean towards the scheme they founded. Contractors compare notes on exactly this in the Contractor Club community, worth an hour before you spend the money.
6. Trade registrations and cards
Around 34% of gates ask for at least one trade credential, and Gas Safe alone appears in 18%. Depending on your trades: Gas Safe (company plus each engineer's categories), NICEIC or NAPIT enrolment with 18th Edition per electrician, F-Gas, OFTEC, FENSA or Certass. Site-based clients check CSCS cards at the gate, and DBS checks come up near schools, care or occupied homes - some marketplaces re-verify on a rolling basis. If you move construction waste, including your own, you need upper-tier waste carrier registration with the Environment Agency.
7. The policy pack
Roughly one gate in seven asks for at least one written policy beyond health and safety: environmental, equality diversity and inclusion, modern slavery, anti-bribery, GDPR with ICO registration, a quality or QMS statement, safeguarding for schools and care work, and social value. None need to be long - one to two pages, signed and dated, is enough at SME level, and ISO 9001 is not expected. Public-sector scoring allocates real marks to social value, so a prepared page turns a scramble into a paste.
8. References and track record
Nearly 47% of gates ask for references, and three is the standard number. Capture organisation, contact name, email, phone, contract value, scope and dates for each - PQQ forms want all seven fields and will not accept "available on request". Social housing and property management references carry the most weight for maintenance work. Add three one-page case studies with photographs and values; almost nothing requires them, and almost everything reads better for them.
9. Portal operations
The gate nobody plans for. Once you hold accounts across dozens of buyers, admin becomes the constraint. Set up one dedicated tenders inbox rather than routing hundreds of portal notifications into your personal email, keep credentials in a password vault, and maintain one canonical document folder with dated filenames such as EL-Insurance-exp2027-03.pdf. Then run a renewal calendar for insurance, SSIP, accreditations, cards and ICO registration. An expired certificate rarely triggers a warning email - it triggers silent delisting, and you simply stop being shown jobs.
The buy order for the next 90 days
Do not attempt all nine at once. If you are working out what does my company need to get more work UK buyers award this quarter, this sequence front-loads the cheapest unlocks:
- Free and immediate - clean up Companies House, register on the Central Digital Platform for a share code (mandatory for above-threshold public work under the Procurement Act 2023), create the tenders inbox, build the document folder.
- Cheap and fast - write the H&S and policy packs, assemble RAMS samples and the training matrix, gather three full references.
- The insurance call - check your EL, PL and PI levels against what target buyers specify, then raise limits where the gap is real.
- One SSIP badge - the biggest unlock per pound spent, opening more than a quarter of gates.
- Constructionline - referenced by around 18% of the gates we mapped; Gold includes SSIP and enhanced vetting, and several large contractors will not progress you without it.
- Later, and only when chasing tier-ones - Common Assessment Standard, sector schemes for utilities or rail, and Cyber Essentials where councils and NHS trusts ask.
Where a ready company gets matched to work
Once the pack exists, the honest answer to what does my company need to get more work UK-wide stops being paperwork and becomes distribution. That is where PlanaJob fits: property managers raise maintenance jobs and compare quotes from vetted contractors, so the verification you have just built becomes the thing that shortlists you rather than a form you fill in again. Contractors with certificates loaded and current get matched to live jobs instead of chasing them - it helps to see how the property manager side works and what they are looking at when your quote lands. For where to find work in the first place, see the work sources pillar on the PlanaJob blog.
FAQ
What does my company need to get more work UK councils and housing associations put out?
For above-threshold public work you need a Central Digital Platform registration and share code as a baseline, plus an SSIP badge, insurance at the specified levels, three references and a policy pack including social value. Councils weight social value in scoring, so a prepared statement earns real marks rather than being a box-tick.
Do I need Constructionline as well as an SSIP badge?
Not initially. An SSIP badge is referenced by just over a quarter of the gates we mapped and costs a fraction of Constructionline Gold, so buy it first. Add Constructionline when a buyer you actually want asks for it, or once you have counted enough targets requiring it to justify the annual fee.
How much of this do I need before I can quote my first job?
Far less than the full list. The short answer to what does my company need to get more work UK marketplaces already list is identity, valid insurance, a written H&S policy and your trade registrations - that clears most open registrations and plenty of smaller property management work. Accreditations and the policy pack are what move you from one-off jobs to contracted programmes, so treat them as phase two, not the entry ticket.