How to Ask a Tender Clarification Question

Most tenders include a window in which bidders can put written questions to the buyer. The Home Office's SME/VCSE Bid Pack describes it plainly: the clarification period is “the time when suppliers can ask written questions before submitting a bid”, and it should be used for “anything unclear, inconsistent or unusual in the tender documents”.

Bidders tend to misuse it in one of two ways.

Some do not ask at all, worried that a question will make them look less capable than the competition. The same Bid Pack is unusually direct on that point: “Good clarification questions reduce risk — they do not weaken your bid.”

Others ask, but ask badly. A vague question gets a vague answer, published to every bidder, and the ambiguity survives with an official reply attached.

This piece is about the second problem: how to ask a question whose answer you can actually use.

What the answer is, and who gets it#

Two facts shape everything about how a clarification question should be written.

First, the answer is not private. Under the Procurement Act 2023, a contracting authority must treat suppliers the same unless a difference between them justifies different treatment. In practice that means one answer for everybody. The Bid Pack's own glossary puts it simply: “All suppliers receive the same answers to ensure fairness.”

Second, the answer can change the tender. The Act allows buyers to modify the terms of a competitive procurement, and Cabinet Office guidance gives a supplier's clarification question as one reason the documents might need amending. A good question can therefore do more than inform your bid. It can correct the pack itself, for everyone.

So a clarification question is a small public document with consequences. It is worth drafting like one.

Three checks before you ask#

Is the answer already there? Search the whole pack, not just the document that raised the question, and read every clarification already published. The Bid Pack advises reading all published answers carefully, “as they may update or explain the requirement for all bidders”. Asking something that has already been answered costs time on both sides and tells competitors you have not read the log.

Does it matter? Not every wrinkle needs an official answer. Prioritise anything that could knock the bid out: eligibility, pass/fail thresholds, mandatory evidence, procedural rules. Then anything that changes price or the shape of the solution. Terminology that does not change what you would do can usually be handled by a stated assumption.

When is the deadline? Tender documents normally set a cut-off for clarification questions, and it usually falls some time before the submission deadline. Find it on day one, not on the day you discover the problem. A question that arrives too late to be answered is the same as no question.

What a useful question looks like#

A useful clarification question does four things:

1. Points to the source. Document, section, paragraph and, if documents have been reissued, version.
2. States what you found. If two statements conflict, quote both.
3. Says what you have already checked. Later clarifications, precedence clauses, definitions.
4. Asks something answerable. Ideally yes or no, one figure, or a choice between options you set out.

The difference is easiest to see side by side. Here is a question about word limits, a point the Bid Pack itself suggests clarifying:

The second version is longer, but it is far harder to answer evasively, and the answer can be applied immediately without a further round of interpretation.

The same structure works when a requirement looks heavier than the contract justifies. The Bid Pack says so directly: “If a requirement seems too high for the size or risk of the contract, raise it during the clarification period.”

Note what that question does not do. It does not argue, complain or ask the buyer to lower the figure. It identifies a specific gap in the documents and offers a concrete way of resolving it. Buyers find that kind of question far easier to answer.

One issue per question. Questions that bundle three points together tend to receive an answer to the easiest of them.

Write for an audience of competitors#

Assume every other bidder will read your question as well as the answer. Even where the buyer removes your name, the question itself can say a good deal.

That has two practical consequences.

Ask about the requirement, not about your solution. “Would a subcontracted out-of-hours service satisfy paragraph 3.4?” tells everyone how you intend to deliver. “Please confirm whether paragraph 3.4 permits the out-of-hours service to be subcontracted” asks the same thing without the strategy.

And read everyone else's answers as carefully as your own. Other bidders' questions sometimes uncover problems you had not spotted, and the answers bind you just as much as they bind them. Every published answer should be checked against the requirements you have already extracted.

Post-tender clarification is a different thing#

Searches for “post-tender clarification” usually mean something else: the buyer asking a bidder to clarify a tender that has already been submitted.

That is not a second chance to improve the bid. Courts have long held that clarification cannot be used to change a tender. In early 2025 the Court of Appeal confirmed, in Optima Health v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the general principle that a clarification which changes the tender cannot be permitted, while recognising that genuinely obvious errors may sometimes need clarifying. Bevan Brittan's summary is a useful read.

The practical lesson runs backwards into the clarification period: anything you are unsure about should be asked before submission, while it can still be asked.

Keep a log#

Keep a simple record for every question: what was asked, when, what the answer was, and what it changed. Do the same for the questions other bidders ask.

It takes minutes, and it settles arguments later in the bid about what the buyer actually said, and when. It also gives the next tender from the same buyer a useful head start.

The clarification period is one of the few points in a procurement where a bidder can change the documents rather than simply react to them. The questions that do that best are rarely clever. They are specific, sourced and answerable.