How to Win EV Charging Infrastructure Tenders in the UK

Public EV charging is still expanding fast. By the end of August 2025, the UK had over 85,000 public charge points in place, with thousands more due through LEVI allocations to local and combined authorities. That means more EV charging tenders, more frameworks and more mini-competitions to win.

At Thornton & Lowe, we act as your outsourced bid writing team. We qualify opportunities, shape clear, evidence-rich responses and help you land the scores that win. If you want bids that are easier to write and easier to mark, this guide is for you.

Market Snapshot: Who Are the Typical Buyers?

Demand for public EV charging is rising. Quarterly government stats show steady growth across regions, speeds and charger types, with both local and national funding supporting this expansion.

Two important drivers are shaping the tender landscape:

• Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI Fund): Central government has confirmed £343m capital plus £37.8m resource for local authorities in 2025–27, with an established application portal and support body.
• Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Solutions: This dynamic purchasing system, operated by CCS, is open to government bodies and the wider public sector.

Procurement opportunities are opening up from a variety of avenues. Examples include:

• Local and combined authorities, often looking for residential charge points and car park upgrades
• Central government, typically for workplace and operational charging and national estates
• NHS trusts, who may procure infrastructure for staff and visitor EV charging
• Campus charging for universities, colleges and schools
• Housing providers, both for new builds and retrofitting
• Transport hubs and parking operators

Where to Find EV Charging Tenders

With a variety of different frameworks, DPS and tenders available, it can be difficult to know how to home in on those that are most relevant to your business. At Thornton & Lowe, we have in-house tools that you can use alongside official government portals to find the right opportunities. Here’s what we recommend:

• Begin with Tender Pipeline. We track live public sector contracts across the UK and make it quick to filter by keywords. Getting started is completely free, with our Premium option available if you need access to deeper analysis and competitor insights.
• Check Contracts Finder for lower value opportunities and prior information notices. Use it alongside your Tender Pipeline alerts.
• For high-value notices and call-offs, use Find a Tender, which carries the UK’s above-threshold competitions and is now integrated with GOV.UK One Login.
• Devolved nations post on their own sites. Scotland uses Public Contracts Scotland, Wales uses Sell2Wales, and Northern Ireland uses eTendersNI. If you operate nationally, we’ll align alerts across all three so your pipeline stays complete.

Routes to Market Explained

Not every EV charging contract comes to market the same way. Understanding the route helps you plan effort, timing and the evidence you need. We’ll keep this practical and show where our outsourced bid writing team at Thornton & Lowe fits.

• Open tenders: Any qualified supplier can submit a bid after the notice goes live. Under the Procurement Act 2023 there are two competitive procedures in play: the open procedure and the competitive flexible procedure. Buyers choose the approach in the notice, but in both cases suppliers respond to a published tender.
• Frameworks: A framework is a pre-tendered agreement buyers can call off later, either by direct award or mini-competition. An example is Transport Technology (RM6347). The upside is pipeline access after you win a place. The challenge is making those places convert into awards.
• DPS/dynamic markets: A DPS is like a framework that stays open for new suppliers. You qualify once, then compete in call-offs. CCS runs the Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Solutions (RM6213) DPS. Under the Procurement Act 2023, dynamic markets are replacing DPS. They still consist of an open list of qualified suppliers that authorities can use for competitions, offering more flexibility to buyers.

Readiness Checklist

Before we write a single response, we help you line up the right evidence so an evaluator can tick “compliant” without hesitation. Use this checklist to get bid-ready for EV charging tenders. Where it helps, we will build the documents with you through our outsourced bid writing service at Thornton & Lowe.

• Corporate, financial and insurance
  This includes basic facts about your company, your policies and certifications.
• Technical capability for EV works
  Provide information relating to standards alignments, people and roles, OEM and software, and design and safety.
• Health and safety, CDM and site control
  Give details relating to CDM 2015 duties, including your role as a Contractor or Principal Contractor and further evidence.
• Net zero and Carbon Reduction Plans
  For central government contracts over £5m per year, an up-to-date Carbon Reduction Plan is required at selection. For other contracts, state your decarbonisation approach and how it influences design choices, materials and fleet.
• Social value
  Central government uses the Social Value Model and expects social value to be evaluated in all relevant procurements. Weightings of 10% or more are now common, and many local authorities set higher ranges. See our guide to answering social value questions.
• Evidence library
  Typical documents to include here are CVs, method statements, a short mobilisation plan, risk register, programme, organogram and sample reporting. You can manage your bid content using Thornton & Lowe’s Tender Library.

Writing Winning Responses

Evaluators score what they can see and verify. We make every answer specific, evidenced and easy to mark against the award criteria in the ITT.

Quality

• Mirror the model. Use the buyer’s headings and keywords. Signpost evidence with clear sub-headings, short tables and numbered steps.
• Standards and outcomes. For EV works, cite BS 7671 and the IET Code of Practice where you design, install and commission. This shows you will deliver to current norms without the evaluator needing to guess.
• Accessibility. Where public access applies, build layout commitments into your answer using PAS 1899 language, such as approaches, bay width and user interface positioning.
• Reliability and service. Rapid public networks are expected to achieve very high availability. Address how your maintenance model, monitoring and spares strategy support strong uptime and first-time fix. Convert this into service levels and reporting so the mark is easy to award.
• Social value that is measurable. Many public tenders evaluate social value at meaningful weightings. We tie outcomes to local needs and show verification with KPIs and baselines.

Pricing

We position price to the evaluation model and remove avoidable risk premiums.

• Model first. If the ITT uses total cost, baskets or scenarios, align your assumptions to that model and explain inclusions and exclusions so assessors can compare like for like.
• Whole-life perspective. Link value to maintenance, monitoring, uptime and user experience. For rapid sites, show how your service regime supports reliable operation and better utilisation.
• Scenario clarity. Flag DNO dependencies, civils unknowns, reinstatement standards, bay markings and signage so you are not penalised for ambiguity.

Risk Management

We treat risk as a scored section even when it is not labelled as one.

• Plain-English register. Include sourcing constraints, permits, traffic management, grid notifications, landlord approvals, vandalism and cybersecurity for payment and back-office systems.
• Mitigation linked to standards. Tie controls to the IET Code and BS 7671 where relevant.
• Service continuity. Show spares, swap-outs and telemetry that enable first-time fix, then connect those provisions to your uptime commitments.

Mobilisation

Mobilisation plans win tie-breaks. Ours set out who does what, when, and how progress will be shown. Here is a clear 30-60-90 plan:

• Day 0–30: confirm governance, finalise designs and surveys, DNO submissions, traffic management plans, stakeholder comms, and site readiness.
• Day 31–60: civils and installation sequencing, procurement and logistics, RAMS briefings, accessibility checks against PAS 1899, training plan for operatives.
• Day 61–90: testing and commissioning to BS 7671 and the IET Code of Practice, go-live readiness, uptime monitoring, and first reporting pack.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Even strong technical providers lose marks for avoidable reasons. Here are the traps we see most often and how we coach teams to steer around them.

1) Writing to your service, not the question

Bids drift when answers describe everything you can do rather than what the buyer asked. We build a compliance matrix and map each sentence to the marking scheme so every word earns a point. For a quick refresher on response structure, see our guide on how to structure a bid response.

Fix: use the buyer’s headings verbatim, mirror their evaluation language, and signpost evidence with clear sub-headings and tables where helpful. We provide templates that make this second nature.

2) Thin evidence and vague claims

Statements like “we ensure quality” or “we prioritise safety” go nowhere without proof. Evaluators need verifiable artefacts.

Fix: include the specific artefact the marker expects: named roles, sample RAMS, a short mobilisation plan, draft reporting, and KPIs for uptime and response times. When social value is scored, tie each commitment to a metric, baseline and verification method.

3) Social value bolted on at the end

Treating social value as an afterthought leads to generic promises that do not align with local priorities.

Fix: capture local needs from the specification and embed them in your delivery plan. We align volunteering hours, apprenticeships, local supply chain spend and carbon savings with the council’s outcomes, then show how each will be tracked and reported. Our social value article includes examples of what evaluators look for and how to evidence delivery.

4) Missing the route-to-market nuances

Frameworks, DPS and open tenders require different tactics. Many teams copy a single narrative across all three and lose marks.

Fix: tailor your approach to mini-competitions and call-offs, including how you will meet service levels, reliability targets and maintenance SLAs.

5) Late pipeline decisions

Opportunities arrive fast, particularly via frameworks and DPS. If you qualify them on the deadline week, drafting becomes reactive and error-prone.

Fix: maintain rolling alerts and run disciplined go/no-go reviews. Tender Pipeline can help to streamline this process.

6) Pricing without narrative

Evaluators mark value, not just numbers. Unexplained assumptions lead to downgrades or clarifications.

Fix: include a pricing narrative that explains inclusions, exclusions and scenario assumptions, and link whole-life value to maintenance, uptime and user experience.

7) Accessibility and user journey overlooked

Public charging layouts that ignore accessibility guidance invite low scores and change requests.

Fix: show how your designs cater for different users and environments, and reference the buyer’s own standards or policies where provided.

How Thornton & Lowe can help

We act as your outsourced bid writing team, building a repeatable system that wins EV charging tenders and saves internal time.

What we do for you

• Opportunity spotting and qualification. We set up targeted alerts, curate a short-list each week, and chair a quick go/no-go so effort goes where it counts.
• Route-to-market strategy. We advise whether to pursue open tenders, frameworks or a DPS now, and prepare the different evidence sets each route expects.
• End-to-end bid writing. We draft, edit and design compliant responses that are easy to mark. If you want your team to brush up too, our resource on how to structure a bid response is a handy primer.
• Social value answers that score. We quantify outcomes, set baselines and propose verification methods that satisfy evaluators.
• Framework and DPS conversion. Winning a place is step one. We create mini-competition packs, run reviews and keep lessons learned so your call-off win rates climb over time.

FAQs

What accreditations matter most for EV charging tenders?
There is no single mandatory badge across the board, but evaluators look for compliance with BS 7671 and the IET Code of Practice, supported by robust H&S and environmental management. Where public accessibility is relevant, cite how your design meets PAS 1899.

How much weight does social value usually carry?
In central government, social value is commonly evaluated and often set at 10% or higher. We recommend tying commitments to local needs with measurable KPIs and a clear verification method.

Do I need to mention reliability percentages?
When rapid public chargers are in scope, reference the 99% reliability requirement context and show how your maintenance model, spares and telemetry support it.

Should we chase frameworks or a DPS first?
It depends on your immediacy of need and evidence base. A DPS can open faster call-off opportunities, while frameworks can create multi-year access to a buyer cohort.

Win More EV Charging Tenders with Expert Bid Support

If you want a partner who can drop in, organise the process and lift your scores, we can help. At Thornton & Lowe, we act as your outsourced bid writing team. We will build a repeatable EV charging bid library, shape high-scoring responses, and keep your pipeline moving through frameworks, DPS and open tenders. Talk to us about your next opportunity and we will make it easier to write and easier to mark.