IN Brief:
- Technical Support Services 2026 is a four-year national framework with an estimated value of £260 million.
- Eleven lots span asset management, MEP, higher-risk building duties, net zero, fire, architecture, valuations, and digital services.
- Tenders close on 16 October, with the framework expected to start on 4 January 2027.
Procurement for Housing has opened a £260 million national framework competition for technical consultancy services across social housing, dividing the procurement into 11 lots that range from asset management and MEP engineering to building safety, fire, net zero, and digital services.
Technical Support Services 2026 is expected to run for four years from 4 January 2027 to 3 January 2031. The tender was published on 2 September and closes on 16 October, giving consultants a defined autumn procurement window ahead of the planned January start.
The first lot covers asset management consultancy, including stock-condition surveys, housing quality standards, building surveying, database support, energy performance certificates, and strategic asset planning. Lot two covers surveying and project management, including quantity surveying, cost control, employer’s agent, contract administration, programme management, clerk-of-works services, and resident liaison.
Mechanical and electrical consultancy forms the third lot, with services including building-services design, electrical and mechanical engineering, lighting, lifts, and renewables. The fourth package covers construction design management and principal designer duties, specifically including higher-risk building and Gateway 2 support under the post-Building Safety Act regime.
Net-zero consultancy forms a separate £20 million lot covering stock assessment, carbon roadmaps, grant and funding management, retrofit coordination, PAS 2035 roles, energy audits, and advice on building fabric and efficient systems. Architectural services, combined fire consultancy, and RICS valuation work occupy lots six, seven, and eight.
Digital services make up a further £10 million lot, with the published scope extending into transformation strategy, cloud infrastructure, cyber security, responsible artificial intelligence, automation, data analytics, governance, dashboards, and software implementation. The final two lots combine built-environment services and multidisciplinary consultancy, each carrying an estimated value of £50 million.
The framework is designed for national use and covers the full UK. Procurement for Housing says its members collectively manage more than 90% of UK social housing stock, placing the procurement across a client base where condition data, compliance, fire safety, planned maintenance, decarbonisation, and new capital work increasingly have to be planned together.
The new structure is materially broader than PfH’s existing Technical Support & Associated Services framework, which runs across four lots with an estimated value of £80 million. That earlier arrangement covers engineering and MEP, construction design management, wider technical consultancy, and net-zero support, whereas the 2026 procurement separates more disciplines and adds dedicated valuation and digital-services routes.
Greater separation gives housing providers more control over how professional teams are assembled. A landlord delivering a stock-wide retrofit programme may need condition surveys, cost advice, architectural input, MEP design, funding support, retrofit coordination, project management, and resident liaison, while higher-risk building work can require principal designer competence, fire engineering, structural advice, and carefully controlled building-safety information.
A framework simplifies the commercial route to those services, but it does not remove the need for a clear commission. Poor stock data, vague deliverables, uncertain design responsibility, or incomplete surveys can still produce weak project briefs, and those weaknesses tend to reappear later through redesign, variation, additional investigation, or delayed contractor mobilisation.
Building-safety work makes that distinction particularly important. Consultants supporting higher-risk buildings need defined duties and competent resources, while information developed through surveys, design, fire engineering, and Gateway submissions has to remain consistent as projects move into procurement and construction. A general consultancy appointment is of limited use if responsibility for the evidence trail is unclear.
Net-zero work presents a different coordination problem. Fabric improvements, ventilation, heating, electrical capacity, resident access, moisture risk, funding rules, and post-installation performance all interact, so landlords increasingly need technical teams capable of treating retrofit as a building project rather than a sequence of unrelated measures.
The digital lot reflects the same shift towards portfolio-level decision-making. Asset-management systems, compliance records, dashboards, sensors, and condition data can help landlords prioritise expenditure, but only if underlying information is complete enough to support the decisions being made. Software cannot repair gaps in survey coverage or inconsistent asset records on its own.
PfH’s £260 million figure is an estimated framework value rather than guaranteed consultancy spend. Individual appointments will depend on member requirements over the four-year term and on how social landlords prioritise capital programmes against building safety, damp and mould, energy performance, maintenance backlogs, and other competing demands.
The tender now gives the professional-services market until mid-October to compete across those disciplines. Once the framework begins in January, its effectiveness will depend less on the size of the procurement ceiling than on whether landlords can turn the available consultancy capacity into better-defined projects before construction teams are asked to price and deliver them.
