Finding Public and Housing Association Work in Wales: Sell2Wales, eTenderWales and the WPA

Public and housing association work in Wales is advertised in one place first: Sell2Wales, the free national portal where Welsh councils, NHS Wales, the Welsh Government and the housing associations post their opportunities. Get your Central Digital Platform ID, register on Sell2Wales, set up eTenderWales for the formal bids, then join the Welsh Procurement Alliance's open DPSs and work the big landlords directly.

That is the short version. The longer version matters because Wales runs a two-portal flow most contractors never have explained to them, it has its own procurement thresholds, and since March 2026 it has a law that pushes social clauses down to subcontractors on big public construction jobs. Everything below comes from our directory of 557 UK work sources, checked against each buyer's own pages, and from the Welsh Government's own guidance.

Wales is inside the Procurement Act - with its own rules#

Scotland opted out of the Procurement Act 2023. Wales did not. Since 24 February 2025, Welsh councils, the Welsh Government and NHS Wales have bought under the same Act as England, but with Welsh layers on top: the Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024, and a Wales Procurement Policy Statement in place of the UK one.

What that changes at your end:

• The portal is different. Welsh buyers publish on Sell2Wales, which then feeds the notice through to Find a Tender. You can see Welsh notices on Find a Tender, but your account, your alerts and your Supplier Finder profile live on Sell2Wales.
• The thresholds are different. From 1 January 2026 the Welsh threshold for works contracts is £5,193,000 including VAT. Below that, a Welsh public contract becomes "notifiable" from £30,000 including VAT. Above £30,000, a buyer that advertises the job must publish a below-threshold tender notice on Sell2Wales. It does not have to advertise if it only invites suppliers it has picked - which is why your profile matters.
• Payment down the chain is in the law, not just policy. The Act implies 30-day payment terms into public contracts, and section 73 implies the same terms into every subcontract on a public contract - any clause that says otherwise does not apply. If you sub on a Welsh public job, you are entitled to be paid within 30 days of a valid invoice.
• Big jobs carry social clauses that flow to you. More on that below.

In Wales, the question is not which council to chase. It is whether you are set up in the two systems every council already uses.

Step zero: your Central Digital Platform ID#

Before you touch Sell2Wales, register your organisation on the UK Central Digital Platform through Find a Tender. It is free and gives you a unique supplier ID. Sell2Wales asks for that ID, and you add it under your company profile. For each above-threshold bid you will also complete your "core supplier information" on the platform and share it with the buyer.

Do it once, properly. It is the same record an English council will ask for, so it is not wasted if you work both sides of the border. The jargon is unpacked in construction procurement terms explained.

The two Welsh systems#

1. Sell2Wales - the advertising board#

Sell2Wales is the Welsh Government's national procurement portal. Council maintenance, school works, NHS Wales estates and the Welsh housing associations all advertise here. Registration is free and runs through Sign On Cymru.

Three settings make or break the account:

• Your alert categories. Set them to the trades you actually deliver. Too wide and the alerts become noise you stop reading.
• Your Supplier Finder profile. Buyers search the Supplier Finder directory for suppliers. For low-value work they use Quick Quote - a request sent only to the suppliers the buyer picks, which the public never sees. An empty profile means nobody picks you, and small repairs and maintenance work lives exactly here.
• The annual renewal. A Sell2Wales account has to be renewed every year or it is archived. Put it in the diary. An archived account receives nothing.

If you get stuck, Sell2Wales runs a free helpline on 0800 222 9004.

2. eTenderWales - where you actually bid#

eTenderWales is the e-tendering system many Welsh public bodies use to run the tender itself: issuing the documents, taking clarification questions and receiving bids. It runs on Jaggaer. The Welsh Government's own split is simple - Sell2Wales advertises, eTenderWales is where the tender happens - and it uses both for its contracts over £25,000.

Register once and you can bid to any buyer using it. Do your company profile slowly and accurately before you need it. The firms that lose Welsh tenders on a technicality usually lose them in the last 48 hours, fighting a portal they opened that week.

Not every Welsh buyer uses eTenderWales. Some housing associations run their own portals - Grwp Cynefin is one, below - so always read where the notice sends you.

The social clauses law: what it means for subcontractors#

The Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023 is the part of Welsh procurement with no English equivalent. Its main procurement duties came into force on 25 March 2026.

For contractors, the piece that matters is the major construction contract: a public works contract worth £2 million or more. On those, the buyer has to include social public works clauses - model clauses covering payment, subcontracting, employment, training and environmental standards - and take reasonable steps to make sure they flow down to subcontractors. Frameworks and DPSs have to build them in too.

Two things to know before you lean on it:

• It binds the bodies listed in the Act - Welsh Ministers, councils, NHS bodies and similar. Housing associations are not on the list, so a housing association job may not carry these clauses.
• The separate Code of Practice on Ethical Employment in Supply Chains - Living Wage, no blacklisting, no false self-employment - is voluntary. Many buyers ask about it anyway.

Practically: if you sub to a main contractor on a £2m+ Welsh council or NHS job, expect fair-work and payment terms in your subcontract, and expect questions about how you employ and pay people. On Welsh Government funded construction contracts of £2 million or more there is also a project bank account policy, which ring-fences the money: if you are named on the account, you are paid from it at the same time as the main contractor.

The shared buyer: the Welsh Procurement Alliance#

The Welsh Procurement Alliance (WPA) runs frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems for Welsh councils, housing associations and public bodies, in association with LHC Procurement Group. It is the Welsh sister of the Scottish Procurement Alliance.

Its four DPSs are the door a small firm should look at first, because the WPA says new suppliers can join at any time:

DPS	What it covers
Repair and Maintenance (RM)	Responsive and planned repairs, with workstreams including damp and mould, M&E, drainage and multi-trade
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technology (EERT)	Heat pumps, solar PV, batteries and related retrofit measures
Whole House Refurbishment (WH)	Whole-house refurbishment of existing homes
Housing Construction South and Mid Wales (HCSWa)	New-build housing, regional

You apply through the WPA's In-tend portal. A DPS place is not work - it lets you bid when a member runs a mini-competition - but because it never closes, it is the realistic entry point while frameworks open and shut on their own timetable. These DPSs were set up under the old 2015 regulations, so check each one's end date before you plan around it.

The WPA's frameworks sit alongside them, including Retrofit and Decarbonisation (N9) and Refurbishment and Modernisation (RM3). Those only open when they are renewed. If a lot you want has just been awarded, find out who won it and offer them your capacity. If it is schools and public buildings over £250,000 in South East and Mid Wales you are after, watch the SEWSCAP framework, led by Rhondda Cynon Taf, which takes applications at each new generation.

The landlords: Codi, Trivallis, ClwydAlyn and Grwp Cynefin#

Portals are half of it. The other half is the landlords who own and maintain tens of thousands of Welsh homes and buy constantly.

• Codi Group is what Pobl Group and Linc Cymru have traded as since 1 January 2026 - Wales' largest housing group, with close to 25,000 homes according to trade press. If your notes still say Pobl, update them. It has advertised on Sell2Wales and runs formal tenders on eTenderWales; its new construction framework tender in September 2026 ran there. Its procurement page is the route in.
• Trivallis, the Rhondda Cynon Taf landlord with nearly 11,000 homes, sends suppliers to its current opportunities on Sell2Wales from its procurement page, which also sets out what it looks for. Its tender notices name eTenderWales for the bid itself, and its procurement contact is procurement@trivallis.co.uk.
• ClwydAlyn, the North Wales association with 6,800+ homes, publishes its buying bands on its become a supplier page: one quote under £5,000, three quotes between £5,000 and £25,000, and Sell2Wales above that. It uses WPA frameworks for most projects - which is the WPA point above, in practice.
• Grwp Cynefin, with over 5,000 homes across North Wales, runs its own e-tendering portal on In-tend for maintenance and construction packages, and also advertises on Sell2Wales and Find a Tender. It is the reminder that one Welsh landlord can need its own account.

Notice the pattern in ClwydAlyn's bands. Under £25,000 the work goes to suppliers the landlord already knows. That is the work a small firm can actually win first, and the way in is being known - a registered, complete profile and a name the maintenance team has heard.

Why the planned work is coming: WHQS 2023#

If you are wondering whether Welsh social housing has the volume to justify the paperwork, look at the Welsh Housing Quality Standard 2023, which has applied since 1 April 2024. Every social landlord in Wales has to:

• complete whole stock assessments and a target energy pathway for its homes by 31 March 2027,
• bring every home to at least SAP 75 (EPC C) by 31 March 2030,
• reach full compliance by 31 March 2034, with SAP 92 (EPC A) as the long-term target.

That is years of insulation, heating, windows, roofing, ventilation and damp work across the whole Welsh social stock, and a share of it will be bought through routes like the WPA's EERT and refurbishment DPSs. The Welsh Government's Optimised Retrofit Programme has £98.75 million for 2026-27 on top. The firms who are registered and on the DPSs when those pathways turn into programmes will be the ones invited to price them.

Do I need to tender in Welsh?#

No. You can bid in English. Public bodies under the Welsh Language Standards have to state that bids may be made in Welsh and that a Welsh bid will not be treated less favourably. Where your work involves serving the public on the buyer's behalf - tenant-facing repairs, say - the contract can carry Welsh language requirements, such as Welsh-language signage or correspondence. Read the specification rather than assuming either way.

A 30-day plan to get in#

1. Week 1: register on the Central Digital Platform and get your supplier ID. Register on Sell2Wales, add the ID, set alerts to your trades only, complete your Supplier Finder profile and diary the annual renewal.
2. Week 1: register on eTenderWales and fill in the company profile properly - insurance, accounts or financial evidence, health and safety policy, two or three references from comparable work.
3. Week 2: apply to the WPA DPS that fits your trade - Repair and Maintenance for most trades, EERT if you do retrofit.
4. Week 2: sort your health and safety accreditation if you do not have one. Welsh buyers ask for the same SSIP or Constructionline evidence as English ones - I compared them in CHAS vs Constructionline vs SMAS vs SafeContractor.
5. Weeks 3-4: introduce yourself to the maintenance teams at the landlords in your area, register on any own-portal they run, and find out who holds the WPA framework lots for your trade. Offer them your capacity as a subcontractor. That is how I would play it - win the relationship first and the framework place second.

The same logic is behind construction arbitrage generally: work out exactly which door each buyer sits behind before you spend money getting through it.

Where this fits#

Working the rest of the UK too? Scotland runs on entirely different rules - see how to find council and housing association work in Scotland. For England, Find a Tender vs Contracts Finder covers the national portals, how to register on council procurement portals covers the shared platforms, and where to find construction contracts in the UK is the whole map.

On the housing association side generally - how landlords split repairs, voids and planned work, and where their supplier lists sit - there is a full guide to getting work with housing associations on Plan a Job, which is built by the same team as this site.

A note on the numbers: the seven Wales-specific routes here come from our directory of 557 UK work sources, with sign-up requirements researched from each buyer's own pages - two national systems, one shared buyer, one schools framework and three landlords. ClwydAlyn's bands and the WPA's DPS list were checked on their own pages in October 2026. Thresholds, the Social Partnership Act dates and WHQS 2023 were checked against the Welsh Government's own publications and legislation.gov.uk. Buyers change their pages, and if one has changed what it asks for, its page beats this post.

Last checked: 8 October 2026.