Website RFP for a professional regulator with a public register in London (2026)

The verdict in three sentences

For a London professional regulator with 18,000 registrants, rebuilding the website and the public register costs around £60,000 to £120,000 as a 2026 ballpark, with a realistic timeline of 6 to 9 months. The riskiest workstream is not design but register synchronisation with the registration database, because the public register carries legal weight for patients, clients and employers. A 12-section RFP scored 60% on quality and 40% on price protects the regulator against bids that quietly underestimate that work.

The 12 sections of a robust RFP

A regulator publishes information with near-statutory value: who is registered, who has conditions on practice, who has been struck off. It serves very different audiences (the public, registrants, employers, government) and usually follows public procurement rules under the Procurement Act 2023. The RFP must therefore go well beyond a marketing brief.

Sections 4 to 6 account for half of the budget. A supplier quoting £35,000 for everything has almost certainly assumed a static register updated by hand, which is unacceptable when a striking-off must be reflected within 24 to 48 hours.

Register and portal: the technical choices that move the price

Synchronisation is the main friction point. Most regulators run a registration system (often a CRM such as Dynamics or a bespoke database built a decade ago). Five scenarios are common.

For 18,000 registrants, a daily scheduled export is usually the best trade-off. The RFP should require an automated sync report, an alert on failure and a clear rule: a suspended registrant disappears from the public register by the next day at the latest, while the fitness-to-practise annotation is shown where the law requires it.

The registrant portal should stay lean in version one: secure login, registration certificates, annual fee payment, restricted documents. CPD tracking or online elections are priced separately because they can double the budget.

As a public body, the regulator falls under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018. Plan an audit on 15 to 20 templates, an accessibility statement and a remediation plan. Budget £5,000 to £9,000 if accessibility is built in from day one, far more if it is bolted on at the end.

The 60/40 scoring grid and the timeline

A 60% quality and 40% price split fits this project. Quality can be broken down as follows: understanding and methodology (20 points), register and sync solution (15 points), accessibility and security (15 points), comparable references (10 points). Price is scored with the usual formula: score = 40 × lowest price / bid price.

A realistic calendar: procurement (6 to 8 weeks), discovery workshops (4 weeks), design (6 weeks), build and sync (10 to 14 weeks), testing and accessibility (4 weeks). That gives 6 to 9 months from publishing the RFP to go-live.

Mini case study

Helen, chief executive of a London regulator with 18,000 registrants, receives four bids. Bid A at £55,000 relies on a monthly CSV import. Bid B at £105,000 includes a daily SFTP export, a WCAG audit and support priced separately. On price, A scores 40 points and B scores 40 × 55,000 / 105,000 = 21 points. On quality, A scores 30 out of 60 and B scores 55. Totals: A = 70, B = 76. Bid B wins. Helen also prices the hidden cost of A: the registration team would spend 2 days a month checking the register, 24 days a year at £400 fully loaded, roughly £9,600 a year. Over three years, most of the £50,000 initial gap is absorbed, before counting the reputational risk of a struck-off practitioner still showing as registered.

FAQ

Does a regulator have to run a formal tender?

Most UK regulators are contracting authorities, so the Procurement Act 2023 applies above the relevant thresholds, around £214,000 for central bodies and lower internal limits in practice. Even below thresholds, a documented scoring grid is expected by auditors.

How long does register synchronisation take?

Allow 4 to 8 weeks of work, including 2 weeks of joint testing with the CRM vendor. The main variable is how quickly that vendor can expose an export or API.

Is WCAG 2.2 AA mandatory?

For public sector bodies, yes, under the 2018 regulations, with GDS monitoring. An initial audit costs roughly £3,000 to £5,000 in 2026.

How do we avoid supplier lock-in?

Require code ownership, a standard or open-source CMS, technical documentation and an exit clause with handover within 30 days.

What annual budget should we plan after launch?

Serious support for this scope is typically 10 to 15% of the build cost per year, so £8,000 to £15,000 for a £100,000 project.

See also our guide on the waste authority website tender in Dublin and our institutional websites service.

Let's scope your project. We help you frame the public register, the registrant portal and the procurement calendar before you publish your RFP. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.