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This is a sample of the £9.99 public-notice product, date-stamped 1 September 2026. Deadline on the notice: 7 October 2026, 12:00 BST. Insurance, turnover and accreditations are Unknown because they are not on Contracts Finder. Sector context: window cleaning tenders on Contracts Finder.

1. Verdict in 8 lines

1. The buyer has already told the market it wants one contractor for all campuses in three counties (notice).
2. The previous notice CA17955 closed on 1 July 2026 with empty awards (previous notice API) — so this is a live retender, not a fishing expedition.
3. Public pass/fail items (insurance, turnover, accreditations) are not on Contracts Finder. Treat those as Unknown until the ITT is opened.
4. Do not confuse this with the Group’s building-cleaning award to Brayborne Facilities Services Limited (award notice).
5. The published £200,000 (API) is not labelled as one-year or four-year value — price the ITT, not the headline.
6. If you cannot cover every named geography, or you cannot evidence working-at-height on occupied education sites, this flips to No-go.

2. What this contract actually is (plain English)

Bedford College is buying an external (and, if the pack says so, internal) window-cleaning service from one contractor, not a panel, across its campuses in Bedfordshire, Central Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire (notice description).

The Contracts Finder description is short. It says the contractor must show best value, transparent costing, and a consistently high standard, and that building specifications and cleaning frequency sit in the tender pack (notice). The previous, closed notice for the same service was more explicit: “a single provider is required to serve all campuses” and “the contract is offered on a 1 year plus 1 year plus 1 year plus 1 year basis — up to a maximum of four years”, with “regularity” in the pack (CA17955 API).

The live notice’s date fields show a one-year core term (2 November 2026 to 1 November 2027) (API), while the narrative offers extensions to four years. That mismatch is a pricing trap, not a reason to invent an annual rate.

Who the buyer is

The legal entity on Contracts Finder is Bedford College (notice). The Group’s own governance page states the legal entity is known as “Bedford College” and is an exempt charity for the purposes of Part 3 of the Charities Act 2011 (corporate governance). It is not a Companies House limited company. The Group’s one active wholly owned subsidiary on that page is Bedford College Professional Services Limited (corporate governance), company number 09880261, status Active, incorporated 19 November 2015, SIC 85600 Educational support services, registered office Bedford College, Cauldwell Street, Bedford MK42 9AH (Companies House). That subsidiary is personnel support, not the window-cleaning buyer.

The Group was formed in 2017 after the merger of Bedford College and Tresham College, and describes itself as the largest education provider in the South East Midlands, with over 15,000 students a year (Our Group). The same group page lists colleges in Bedford, Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard, Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough, plus Shuttleworth College, The Bedford Sixth Form, The Corby Sixth Form (opened September 2023), the National College for Motorsport at Silverstone, and community Learning Centres in Bedford, Corby and Kettering (Our Group). The Cauldwell Street campus is at MK42 9AH, matching the notice postcode (Cauldwell Street campus; API). Shuttleworth College is at Old Warden Park, Biggleswade SG18 9DX (Shuttleworth).

That geography is the job: one van (or fleet) covering a spread of town-centre, land-based and sixth-form sites, including buildings that will include height, occupied teaching space, and likely holiday-window working. The notice does not list each building. The pack does (notice).

How you bid

This is an open procedure on MultiQuote. The notice tells registered suppliers to log in and open CA18401, and unregistered suppliers to register quoting CA18401 (notice). Queries go through the portal, not a personal inbox (portal mailbox on the notice is a MultiQuote support address; personal contact names on the notice are redacted in this memo).

What it is not

• It is not the Group’s general building-cleaning contract (CPV 90910000, awarded 2024 — see section 4).
• It is not a DPS or framework (isFrameworkAgreement: false) (API).
• It is not a call-off the buyer has already priced. You will price frequencies and access methods from the pack.

3. Mandatory pass/fail table vs published requirements

Mark Unknown where the Contracts Finder notice is silent. Do not treat “typical for this sector” as a published requirement.

Read this table as: the public notice is enough to decide “this is our work”, not enough to complete a selection questionnaire. Anyone selling a memo that invents a £5m PI or a 2× turnover multiple from “industry norms” is guessing. This memo does not.

4. Incumbent / last award

Window cleaning — not found in public award data

Searched on 1 September 2026 via the Contracts Finder v2 search API (POST /api/rest/2/search_notices/json) for Bedford College notices and via GET of the live and previous window-cleaning notices (API docs).

CA17955 had 1,147 recorded views and the same CPV 90911300, the same three-county geography, the same “single provider”, and the same 1+1+1+1 structure (CA17955 API). No supplier name, no award value, no Companies House number.

Do not invent an incumbent. Possible public explanations (none of which is evidenced on CF): no compliant bid; all bids over budget; buyer delayed start; award not yet published. A bidder should find out by:

1. Opening CA18401 on MultiQuote and reading any TUPE / incumbent / “current contractor” schedule (portal).
2. Raising a clarification on the portal (not a personal email).
3. If still silent after award of this retender, a FOI to Bedford College asking for the name and value of the last window-cleaning contract.
4. Checking later Contracts Finder award notices for CPV 90911300 from this buyer.

Related, but different: building cleaning (do not treat as this incumbent)

On 23 July 2024 Bedford College published an Awarded notice titled Cleaning Services (CPV 90910000), described as “a single provider to provide cleaning services across the whole College estate in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire” (award notice).

Companies House snapshot — Brayborne Facilities Services Limited (01862534)

Source: find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01862534

This is the Group’s internal building-cleaning supplier on a three-year award running to 31 August 2027 (award API). Window cleaning is a separate CPV and a separate retender. Brayborne may or may not also clean windows; public award data does not say so.

5. Evaluation traps and likely social-value asks (tied to the notice text)

Traps that are on the notice

1. £200,000 vs 1 year vs 4 years. The API stores valueLow = valueHigh = 200000 against a one-year start/end, while the narrative allows extensions to four years (API). If you annualise £200,000 over four years you may underbid; if you treat £200,000 as one year you may overbid. Price the bill of quantities in the pack.
2. Single provider, three counties. “All campuses in Bedfordshire, Central Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire” (notice). A Bedford-only operator who subcontracts Northamptonshire without declaring it will fail a “single reliable provider” test if the ITT bans unapproved subcontracting. The notice does not publish a subcontracting rule — Unknown, check pack.
3. Frequencies are hidden. “Full details of the building specifications and cleaning frequency requirements are included within the tender pack” (notice). A lump-sum with no site list is how window-cleaning SMEs lose money on atria, curtain walling and land-based outbuildings (Shuttleworth is a parkland campus — Shuttleworth).
4. Retender dynamics. CA17955 closed 1 July 2026 with no award after 1,147 views (CA17955 API). The buyer still needs a contractor (they republished on 1 September 2026). That can mean: they will be picky about compliance, or they will be grateful for a complete bid. You cannot know which from CF. Read the new pack for any change in specification or commercial model.
5. “Best value” and “transparent costing” are in the description (notice). Expect an open-book rate card (per visit / per elevation / per campus), not a single magic number.
6. Portal, not email. Submissions that go to a personal mailbox will not count. The notice routes everything through MultiQuote (notice).
7. Occupied education sites. Not spelled out as a scored item, but the buyer is an FE group with 15,000+ students (Our Group). Method statements that ignore term-time access, safeguarding and working near students will look amateur even if DBS is not on the CF notice.

Social value — what is not on this notice

The Contracts Finder notice does not publish a social-value weighting, a net-zero clause, an apprenticeship KPI, or a local-labour percentage. Unknown. Likely asks in an FE ITT (to be confirmed in the pack, not assumed): local employment across Beds / Northants towns named on the Group site (Our Group); student work-experience or curriculum talks; responsible chemicals / water use (the notice itself only says “high-quality” and “excellent standards”). Do not write a social-value essay that the scoring matrix does not buy.

6. What would have to be true to flip the verdict

Go → No-go if any of these is true in the pack:

• Mandatory turnover, insurance or accreditation you cannot meet (figures not published on CF — check before pricing).
• A requirement to be on a named framework (CPC / ESPO etc.) that you are not on. CF says this is not a framework (API).
• Site list includes specialist access (abseil / rope / MEWP on live highways) you cannot resource.
• TUPE of a team you cannot cost in five weeks.
• Clarifications show the £200,000 is a one-year budget that is below your measured cost.

Go → stronger Go if:

• You already cover these towns and can name Shuttleworth, Tresham and Cauldwell Street in the method statement (Our Group).
• You can submit a campus-by-campus rate card that matches the pack frequencies.
• You raise clarifications in week one, not week five.

No-go from the start if: you are a building-cleaning firm treating this as a bolt-on, you have no height-access regime, or you cannot stand up a MultiQuote account before the deadline.

7. Source list (URLs)

1. Live notice (HTML): https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/f0d2e490-5a08-4462-ab24-72cdb398e98a
2. Live notice (JSON): https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/api/rest/2/get_published_notice/json/f0d2e490-5a08-4462-ab24-72cdb398e98a
3. Previous window-cleaning notice CA17955 (JSON): https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/api/rest/2/get_published_notice/json/31352e5f-33f4-4fff-b82f-0ab67bafbf2a
4. Previous window-cleaning notice (HTML): https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/31352e5f-33f4-4fff-b82f-0ab67bafbf2a
5. Search API used: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/api/rest/2/search_notices/json — docs https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/apidocumentation/Notices/2/POST-rest-searches-search
6. MultiQuote: https://suppliers.multiquote.com
7. Building-cleaning award (Brayborne): https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/f9b3ac75-7492-4859-8426-5ffe2c6fbc05 and JSON https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/api/rest/2/get_published_notice/json/f9b3ac75-7492-4859-8426-5ffe2c6fbc05
8. Brayborne CH: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01862534
9. BCPS CH: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09880261
10. Buyer governance: https://bedfordcollegegroup.ac.uk/about/corporate-governance/
11. Buyer group / campuses: https://bedfordcollegegroup.ac.uk/about-us-2/our-group/
12. Cauldwell Street: https://bedfordcollegegroup.ac.uk/colleges-and-campuses/bedford-college/
13. Shuttleworth: https://bedfordcollegegroup.ac.uk/colleges-and-campuses/shuttleworth-college/
14. OGL v3.0: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
15. Charities Act 2011 (Part 3, exempt charities — cited via buyer page above): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/25/part/3

8. Disclaimer

Read the No-go sample Buy £9.99