Public Sector and Framework Work in a Security Business

What a framework position actually is

A place on a public sector framework is permission to be asked, not a contract to deliver. It means the buying organisation has already satisfied itself about your accreditation, your financial standing, your insurance and your vetting regime, and that you can be invited to bid or called off without going through all of that again. That is genuinely valuable and it is not the same thing as revenue.

What follows from the position is what a buyer prices. Call-off contracts actually awarded, their value, their duration, whether they have been renewed, and whether the framework itself has a remaining term or is approaching a retender. A firm with a framework place and two small call-offs is in a different position from one with the same place and a book of established public sector sites.

The accreditation behind it matters more here than anywhere else in the sector. Public bodies specify certification and vetting in the procurement documents rather than relying on assurance, so Approved Contractor Scheme status, NSI or SSAIB approval at the right scope and complete BS 7858 records are the conditions of continuing to hold the work at all.

How buyers verify it survives a change of control

The first question is whether the framework place is held by the entity being acquired. In a share purchase, where the buyer takes over your company as it stands, it usually travels with the company. In an asset purchase, where the buyer buys only what the business owns and uses, it frequently does not. That is one of the reasons deal structure is worth discussing before heads of terms, the short document setting out the main points of the deal, rather than after.

The second question is what the framework and the call-off contracts say about a change of ownership. Public sector agreements carry change of control provisions more often than commercial ones, and they sometimes require notification, consent, or a fresh assessment of financial standing against the new owner. None of that is necessarily fatal and all of it takes time, which is why a buyer wants to know about it early.

The third is whether the certifications continue. A buyer acquiring a business whose framework place depends on approval it cannot maintain has bought a book it will lose, so scheme rules on changes of control are checked directly with the certification body rather than taken on trust. Owners who have already asked that question arrive at diligence, the buyer's detailed checks, with an answer instead of a fortnight of correspondence.

A framework place is permission to be asked. What a buyer prices is what came of it.

The cost stack underneath a public sector rate

Framework and public sector work tends to be guarding-weighted, which means it is priced off a rate that has to cover a cost base the contractor does not set. That cost base has moved this year. An SIA licence application has cost £204 since April 2026, and from today the Approved Contractor Scheme fee rises from £15 to £25 for each licensable individual deployed, the first increase in the annual registration fee in the history of the scheme.

Neither figure is large on its own and together they are a real number for an operator deploying several hundred people, particularly where the contract rate is fixed for the remainder of its term. A buyer looking at a guarding book with substantial public sector exposure will model that, and will want to see how rate reviews have actually worked in practice rather than what the contract permits.

The honest summary is that public sector work adds credibility, adds duration and adds administrative weight, and that it rewards the businesses that treat compliance as an operating system rather than an annual inconvenience. Those are also the businesses that sell well, which is not a coincidence.

In the years before a sale, Martin Dugan helps owners win more of the recurring, contracted work buyers pay for.