Access the buying power of the UK’s largest housing procurement network, with no membership fee and full support from our team.
The challenge for contractors
We work with housing providers across the UK, and we hear the same thing from the contractors who deliver their projects. Material costs are hard to predict. Without the buying scale of a large organisation, you’re often paying more than you need to for the same products. And when you’ve got operatives picking up materials from different branches and different merchants, it’s difficult to keep on top of what’s being spent and where.
It all adds up. Higher costs make your bids less competitive. Price movements mid-project put your margin at risk. And time spent chasing invoices and reconciling accounts is time your team could spend on something more productive.
That’s where we come in.
What Associate Membership gives you
Better prices on materials. Full visibility of your spend. No membership fee.
If you’re a contractor delivering public sector housing projects, you’ll know how quickly material costs can eat into your margins. PfH’s Associate Membership is designed to help. It gives you access to our framework pricing on materials from established suppliers, the tools to keep track of what your team is spending, and a dedicated team behind you to make sure it all runs smoothly. There’s no fee to join, and getting set up takes days, not weeks.
A clear picture of your spend
Our Quantum platform gives you something most contractors don’t have: full visibility. It validates pricing at the point of sale, tracks purchases across your operatives, and pulls everything together in one place. You can see what’s being bought, by whom, at what price, and against which project. No more guesswork, no more spreadsheets.
Better prices, no membership fee
There’s no cost to join. Through PfH’s £1.42bn collective buying power, you get access to our framework pricing on a core range of materials from our approved suppliers. Associate members typically save between 5% and 10% compared to standard trade pricing, which makes a real difference when you’re costing a bid or managing a tight programme. For anything outside the framework product range, you can still buy from the same suppliers at your existing trade rates, all through the same account.
Less time on paperwork
Instead of managing dozens of invoices from multiple branches, you get consolidated billing. Reporting is straightforward, which means less time on reconciliation and audit prep, and more time focused on delivery.
Every purchase tracked to the person and the project
Each of your operatives gets a PfH Account Card. When they pick up materials at any branch nationally, that purchase is recorded and visible on the platform, linked to them and to the project they’re working on. It gives you proper cost control without adding any extra steps for your team on site.
Current suppliers
Our Associate Membership currently connects you with some of the most established names in the sector:
These are suppliers you probably already know and use. The difference is the pricing you’ll get through your PfH account. We’re always working to bring more suppliers into the programme, so this list will grow over time.
CEF
A trusted name in plumbing and heating supplies, offering a wide range of products backed by expert advice and reliable service.
Jewson Partnership Solutions
The UK’s largest electrical wholesaler, covering everything from wiring accessories to lighting and renewable solutions.
Wolseley
Specialists in building materials for social housing and public sector projects, with a focus on quality and consistency across all trades.
How it works day to day
We’ve kept this as simple as possible. Your operatives can visit a branch in person, order online, or use whatever combination works best for them. PfH pricing is applied at account level, so it doesn’t matter which branch they go to.
If you already have trade accounts with any of our suppliers, we can apply PfH pricing to your existing account or set up a separate one alongside it. There’s no need to change the way your team works.
Who can join
Associate Membership is open to any contractor delivering public sector work, with a minimum annual materials spend of £100,000. If you’re not sure whether it’s right for you, give us a call and we’ll talk it through.
Strengthen your bids
Being a PfH Associate Member gives you something extra when you’re competing for work. You can reference your membership in tender submissions, which shows housing providers and public sector clients that you’re buying through a trusted procurement network. In a competitive field, that can make a difference.
How to get started
We’ve made the process as straightforward as we can:
Get in touch – Let us know you’re interested and we’ll take it from there.
Tell us about your spend – A quick snapshot of what you buy and roughly how much you spend on materials each year.
See what you could save – We’ll benchmark your current prices against our framework rates so you can see the difference.
Sign up – If you’re happy, you can join online in minutes.
Start buying – Your account is ready and your team can start using it straight away.
Ongoing support – We’ll check in to make sure everything is working well and you’re getting the most from the service.
Frequently asked questions
A standard trade account gives you whatever pricing your individual business has been able to negotiate based on your own spend volume. PfH’s Associate Membership works differently. Your purchases are backed by PfH’s £1.42bn collective buying power across the social housing sector, which means you benefit from pricing that has been negotiated at a scale most individual contractors could never achieve alone. On top of the pricing, you also get access to the Quantum platform, which gives you line-level visibility of every purchase across your workforce. A standard trade account typically comes with a monthly statement and not much else. With Associate Membership, you get consolidated billing, spend tracking by operative and by project, and pricing validation at the point of sale. You also get a dedicated support team who will help you get set up and stay on top of your account. It’s worth noting that if you already hold trade accounts with Wolseley, CEF or Jewson Partnership Solutions, you don’t need to close them. PfH pricing can be applied to your existing account, so the transition is straightforward.
Yes. Associate Membership is designed to work with your current setup, not replace it. If you already have trade accounts with any of our approved suppliers, PfH pricing can be applied directly to your existing account. Alternatively, we can set up a separate PfH account alongside it. The choice is yours. For suppliers outside the PfH programme, nothing changes. You can continue buying from whoever you choose for products or categories that aren’t covered by the framework product range. Many Associate Members use PfH pricing for their core, high-volume materials purchases where the savings are most significant, and continue using their other supplier relationships for specialist or niche products. There’s no exclusivity requirement and no obligation to move all of your spend through PfH. The aim is to reduce your costs where we can, not to complicate your supply chain.
The framework product file covers a core range of materials commonly used in social housing maintenance, repair and improvement projects. This includes plumbing and heating supplies through Wolseley, electrical materials and accessories through CEF, and general building materials through Jewson Partnership Solutions. The range is designed to cover the products that contractors working on public sector housing projects use most frequently, from everyday consumables to larger project-specific items. If you need something that falls outside the framework product range, you can still purchase it from the same suppliers at your existing trade rates through the same account. This means your operatives don’t need to think about which items are on the framework and which aren’t. They simply buy what they need, and the best available price is applied automatically at account level. We regularly review and update the product file to make sure it reflects what contractors are actually buying, and we welcome feedback from Associate Members on gaps or additions they’d like to see.
Quantum is PfH’s spend and contract management platform, and it’s included with your Associate Membership at no extra cost. For contractors, it solves a problem that spreadsheets and supplier statements can’t: real-time visibility of what your team is buying across multiple branches and suppliers, all in one place. You can see spend broken down by operative, by project, by supplier and by product category. Pricing is validated at point of sale, so you know that the framework rates are being applied correctly every time. Quantum also consolidates your billing, so instead of reconciling dozens of individual invoices from different branches, you get a single, clear view of your outgoings. For contractors preparing for audits or needing to report on project costs, this saves significant time. The platform is browser-based, so there’s nothing to install, and our team will walk you through it when your account is set up. If you’re used to managing spend through a combination of supplier portals, emailed statements and manual tracking, Quantum brings all of that into one place.
There is no long-term contract or lock-in period. Associate Membership is designed to be straightforward, both to join and to leave if your circumstances change. We believe the service should earn your continued use through the savings and support it delivers, not through contractual obligations. The minimum annual materials spend of £100,000 is an eligibility threshold rather than a committed volume. It’s there to ensure that the service delivers meaningful value for your business and that the account setup is worthwhile. If your spend fluctuates from year to year due to project cycles, that’s understood. We work with contractors across all kinds of programmes and we know that workloads aren’t always predictable. If you have questions about how the membership works in relation to your specific business circumstances, our team is happy to talk it through before you sign up.
Most contractors are up and running within a few days. Once you’ve submitted your enquiry and shared some basic information about your typical materials spend, we’ll benchmark your current prices against our framework rates so you can see the potential savings. If you’re happy with what you see, the sign-up process is completed online and takes minutes. From there, we set up your account with the relevant suppliers, issue PfH Account Cards for your operatives, and give you access to the Quantum platform. The whole process from first enquiry to first purchase is typically completed within one to two weeks, depending on how quickly you’re able to share your spend information. There’s no lengthy procurement process, no board approval needed on our side, and no complex paperwork. We’ve deliberately kept it simple because we know contractors are busy and don’t have time for drawn-out onboarding. If you have an urgent need, let us know and we’ll do what we can to speed things up.
It can help in two ways. First, the savings you make on materials directly improve your margins, which means you can price more competitively without sacrificing profitability. For contractors operating in a market where bids are often won or lost on small percentage differences, a 5-10% reduction in materials costs can be the difference between winning and losing work. Second, you can reference your PfH Associate Membership in tender submissions. Housing providers and public sector clients increasingly want to see that their supply chain is buying responsibly and through recognised procurement channels. Being able to demonstrate that you purchase materials through PfH, the UK’s leading procurement partner for social housing, adds credibility to your bid. It shows that you take cost control, transparency and responsible procurement seriously. While it won’t guarantee you win a contract on its own, it strengthens your overall proposition, particularly when combined with competitive pricing.
Each operative who needs to purchase materials is issued with a PfH Account Card linked to your company account. The card works at any branch of our approved suppliers nationally, and your operatives use it the same way they would use any trade account card. They present it at the counter or quote the account number when ordering online or by phone, and PfH framework pricing is applied automatically. There’s no app to download and no separate ordering system to learn. From the operative’s perspective, the process feels the same as buying on a normal trade account. The difference happens behind the scenes. Every transaction is recorded on the Quantum platform, tagged to the individual card holder, and can be allocated to a specific project. This gives you a complete audit trail of who bought what, where, and when, without requiring your operatives to do anything differently on site. If a card is lost or an operative leaves, you can request a replacement or cancel a card through our team. You control who has purchasing authority and can add or remove cards as your team changes.
Associate Membership isn’t a self-service product that you sign up for and then manage on your own. When your account goes live, our team will walk you through the Quantum platform, make sure your operatives have their Account Cards, and confirm that pricing is being applied correctly across your supplier accounts. After that, we stay in touch. Your account is monitored to make sure everything is running smoothly, and we’ll proactively flag anything that looks unusual, whether that’s unexpected spend patterns, pricing discrepancies, or opportunities to save more. If you have questions, need to add new operatives, or want to understand your spend data in more detail, our team is available to help. We also check in periodically to review how the membership is working for you and whether there are ways to get more from it. This is the same approach we take across our 1,100+ housing provider members, and it’s a core part of what sets PfH apart from a standard supplier arrangement. You’re not just getting a discount card. You’re getting a supportive team behind you.
Associate Membership is open to any contractor delivering public sector work, which includes but isn’t limited to social housing. If you’re working on projects for local authorities, housing associations, ALMOs, registered providers, or other public bodies, you’re eligible to join provided you meet the minimum annual materials spend of £100,000. The framework pricing has been developed with social housing maintenance, repair and improvement projects in mind, so the product range is particularly strong in the materials most commonly used in that sector. However, if your public sector work spans other areas such as education, healthcare or local authority buildings, you’ll still find the core materials range relevant and the pricing competitive. If you’re unsure whether your work qualifies, the simplest thing to do is get in touch. We can quickly confirm your eligibility and give you an idea of the savings available based on what you’re currently buying.
