Terrier & Co
The work below the line
Most of the work a small firm can win is never advertised.
Public buyers advertise the large contracts and quietly award the rest from lists: approved suppliers, framework lots, qualification registers. If you are not on the list, you never see the work, and no alert service will ever tell you it existed.
Terrier & Co reads the registers for what is held and when it ends, and puts one firm per trade, per patch, onto those lists. Five to thirty staff: big enough to service a public contract, too small to keep a bid writer.
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01 The threshold
There is a pound figure below which nobody has to tell you.
Above £207,720 including VAT, a council or an NHS trust runs a regulated competition. Below £30,000 it need not publish a tender notice at all, and section 87 of the Procurement Act 2023 lifts the notice requirement altogether where a buyer invites tenders only from suppliers it has already chosen. Three firms it knows, and no advert.
The work still surfaces. Under the Local Government Transparency Code 2015 every English council publishes, quarterly, each contract over £5,000 with its supplier, value, and end date. It lands months late, with the incumbent named, and nothing is ever pushed to you.
So the band a ten-van firm bids for is the band a tender alert cannot see. Across every award we hold a value for, it is 47% of them:
Awards of £100,000 and over
178,208
Awards under £100,000 — below the line
160,091
47% of every valued award we hold
Median award £114,267
The band a tender alert cannot see
Note on the figuresValues are taken as the buyer published them, which for a framework is the whole framework and not the work any one supplier will see. The count is what we are claiming here; the pounds are indicative.
02 What we read
Four records. One is pushed to you. The other three you have to go and read.
Source 01
371,785 read
Award notices
Every award published to Contracts Finder and Find a Tender. Who won, what it was worth, and the field the whole practice rests on: when it ends.
Source 02
10,125 buyers
Contract registers
The quarterly £5,000 registers every English council publishes. This is where work that was never advertised finally appears, months after it was awarded — with the incumbent named.
Source 03
4 systems
Qualification systems
RISQS for rail, Achilles UVDB for utilities, CHAS and Constructionline elsewhere. We do the applications. Network Rail can select a firm from RISQS without advertising at all, and work let that way was never on a portal to be found.
Source 04
47,601 within 24 months
Expiry
A contract ending in eighteen months is a conversation now and a bidding war later. We read every end date we hold and say which buyer to approach, and which to leave alone.
03 The register, as it stands
371,785Award notices read
47,601Contracts ending within 24 months
10,125Buying authorities mapped
£114,267Median award value
ProvenanceSnapshot 28 July 2026, taken part-way through a four-year read of the record: 332 windows done, the walk still running. Every figure on this page is a live query, not a rounded claim — which is why they are odd numbers, and why they will be different next week.
04 What we do for one firm
Onto the lists, then read the record on your behalf.
Portal registrations, framework and dynamic market applications, and the qualification systems your trade actually needs: RISQS for rail, Achilles UVDB for utilities, CHAS and Constructionline elsewhere. We do the forms.
Then we read. Every award notice carries an end date, so we can tell you which buyer to approach and when. About eighteen months out, while it is still a conversation rather than a bidding war.
Then we tell you what not to bid for. A firm that bids everything spends its year writing losing bids. Part of what you are paying for is the ones we talk you out of.
How slow this isRegistration on RISQS or UVDB takes weeks. A contract ending in eighteen months is a conversation you start now. If you need work next month, we are not the answer.
On the priceThere is no price on this page. Nobody has been asked to pay one yet, so any figure here would be a guess. Ask, and you will get the number we are asking and how it is worked out.
05 Patches Ask what is open
One firm per trade, per patch. Only one.
We are a small practice, and that is the shape of the product: one firm per trade per patch is what we can carry. It is also the only arrangement we can run honestly. Two bids for the same lot, written by the same hand, are not two bids. So each trade in each patch is licensed once, and when it is taken it is closed.
What we have not gotNo client list, no case studies, no win rate. Terrier & Co is new. The figures on this page are the only evidence we have, which is why they are stated to the digit and dated.
CornwallSpecialist cleaningOpen
CornwallArboriculture & groundsOpen
DevonArboriculture & groundsOpen
SomersetSpecialist cleaningOpen
DorsetWaste & voidsOpen
Rail networkLineside vegetation · RISQSOpen
The board as it standsEvery patch is open. Nothing here is held yet, and the first firm into each one sets what we build around it. This is six of them: the full register is on the patch map, with the sixteen patches we sell and which of them close which.
What happens next
Twenty minutes, and we will show you the register.
Send your trade and your county. You get a written note back: what is held there, what ends inside two years, and which of it you could win. If the patch is thin, we say so. We will not ring you.
Ask what is under your patch