analysis
contracts awarded without competition
66,312 UK public sector contracts have been awarded directly, without a competitive process, out of 591,476 whose route to market the publisher recorded — 11.2% of them. Over the last 24 months the figure is 21%.
A direct award is a contract given to one supplier without running a competition. That is lawful in defined circumstances — genuine urgency, only one supplier capable of delivering, or an extension of work already under way — and a high share is not by itself evidence that anything went wrong. What it is, is a question worth asking, and one the primary sources publish the answer to without ever assembling it.
The classification is the publisher's own, taken from the OCDS procurementMethod field. We do not infer it, and we do not currently hold the justification a buyer gave, because the source feeds carry it inconsistently.
buyers by share of contracts awarded directly
Ranked by share, not by count. A department publishing tens of thousands of notices would top a count ranking on volume alone, which tells you nothing. Buyers with fewer than 10 direct awards are excluded, because a small denominator produces meaningless percentages.
| buyer | direct | of all | share | published value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abt Britain Limited | 21 | 21 | 100% | £6,033,226 from 20 of 21 |
| NYnet Public Sector Limited | 15 | 15 | 100% | · |
| Norwich City Services Limited | 119 | 122 | 97.5% | £240,000 from 6 of 119 |
| Medway NHS Foundation Trust | 181 | 187 | 96.8% | £666,729 from 15 of 181 |
| Birmingham Womens and Childrens NHS Foundation Trust | 54 | 56 | 96.4% | £1,131,667 from 20 of 54 |
| Scottish Government- SASA | 39 | 41 | 95.1% | £380,221 from 25 of 39 |
| Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust | 57 | 60 | 95% | £5,232,699 |
| Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust | 53 | 57 | 93% | £200,065 from 5 of 53 |
| Coastline Design and Build Limited | 11 | 12 | 91.7% | · from 4 of 11 |
| bmJV | 21 | 24 | 87.5% | · |
| North London Foundation Trust | 63 | 73 | 86.3% | · |
| Southway Housing Trust (manchester) Limited | 30 | 35 | 85.7% | £3,733,500 from 29 of 30 |
| The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust | 55 | 65 | 84.6% | £120,037 from 5 of 55 |
| Birmingham Childrens Hospital | 207 | 245 | 84.5% | £228,479 from 2 of 207 |
| Shared Services Connected Limited | 60 | 71 | 84.5% | £1,909,864 from 58 of 60 |
| North Cheshire & Mersey NHS Foundation Trust | 10 | 12 | 83.3% | £33,800 from 1 of 10 |
| Defra Commercial | 176 | 212 | 83% | £3,113,377 from 25 of 176 |
| Whittington Health | 67 | 81 | 82.7% | £473,552 from 6 of 67 |
| Partners Procurement Service (PPS) | 423 | 513 | 82.5% | £57,755,236 from 234 of 423 |
| The Lake District National Park | 23 | 28 | 82.1% | · |
| Hythe & Dibden Parish Council | 17 | 21 | 81% | · |
| Amplius Living | 28 | 35 | 80% | £204,692 from 2 of 28 |
| NHS England | 777 | 974 | 79.8% | £18,765,156 from 39 of 777 |
| Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust | 31 | 39 | 79.5% | £36,158 from 2 of 31 |
| York Teaching Hospital Facilities Management LLP | 30 | 38 | 78.9% | £1,672,248 from 5 of 30 |
| Redditch Borough Council | 145 | 184 | 78.8% | £7,451,480 from 9 of 145 |
| Bromsgrove District Council | 85 | 108 | 78.7% | £1,807,290 from 6 of 85 |
| University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust | 41 | 53 | 77.4% | · |
| Adnodd Cyfyngedig | 10 | 13 | 76.9% | · |
| The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust | 53 | 69 | 76.8% | £552,861 from 20 of 53 |
| Prosper | 191 | 252 | 75.8% | £12,017,293 from 16 of 191 |
| Cardiff and Vale University Health Board | 45 | 60 | 75% | £925,683 from 4 of 45 |
| Civil Nuclear Police Authority | 45 | 60 | 75% | £82,699 from 1 of 45 |
| The Crown Estate | 354 | 474 | 74.7% | £19,380,524 from 285 of 354 |
| Police & Crime Commissioner for Merseyside & Chief Constable for Merseyside | 38 | 51 | 74.5% | £412,050 from 5 of 38 |
| Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust | 216 | 291 | 74.2% | £1,027,541 from 17 of 216 |
| Business Services Organisation | 23 | 31 | 74.2% | £3,611,693 from 3 of 23 |
| Corporate Officer of the House of Commons | 70 | 95 | 73.7% | £165,144 from 2 of 70 |
| London Borough of Harrow | 92 | 125 | 73.6% | £1,749,204 from 7 of 92 |
| Tai Calon Community Housing Ltd | 11 | 15 | 73.3% | · |
the largest single direct awards
direct awards by year
| year | direct | classified | share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2 | 6,563 | 0% |
| 2016 | 57 | 24,470 | 0.2% |
| 2017 | 1,452 | 27,075 | 5.4% |
| 2018 | 2,238 | 33,736 | 6.6% |
| 2019 | 2,972 | 41,493 | 7.2% |
| 2020 | 3,107 | 37,237 | 8.3% |
| 2021 | 4,698 | 62,990 | 7.5% |
| 2022 | 5,702 | 69,888 | 8.2% |
| 2023 | 6,900 | 74,445 | 9.3% |
| 2024 | 7,937 | 74,608 | 10.6% |
| 2025 | 15,589 | 73,515 | 21.2% |
| 2026 | 15,658 | 65,235 | 24% |
The highest share recorded in a single year was 24% in 2026. Years with fewer than 500 classified notices are omitted, because the share swings wildly on small numbers.
how this was counted
Every figure comes from the procurementMethod field as published by the buyer, across Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland and Sell2Wales, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Notices with no recorded method are excluded from both sides of every share, so the percentages describe contracts whose route to market is known rather than the corpus as a whole.
Counts are of contracting processes, not published notices: a tender and its award notice are one contract and are counted once.
Values are the published contract value, restricted to sterling, excluding anything the publisher flagged as a maximum rather than a value, and counting only contracts that were actually awarded. A published value exists for 36,681 of the 66,312 direct awards, so each buyer's total says how many of its awards it was built from. This is the only page on this site that adds values together, and it is defensible here for a specific reason: a direct award is one supplier and no framework, so the framework-ceiling problem that makes totals meaningless elsewhere barely arises — 1.2% of valued direct awards carry a ceiling flag, and those are excluded. Elsewhere on gvtcx you will see medians, and the reason is set out there.
A direct award is not an allegation. It is a lawful route to market in defined circumstances, and this page ranks buyers by a published fact about how they contracted, not by any judgement about whether they should have.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.