month in review

UK public procurement in March 2016

1,172 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in March 2016 by 465 buying organisations, 10% down on February 2016. 0% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

1,172

buyers

465

named a winner

275

awarded directly

median value

£200,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on February 2016

Change in the number of notices published, against the month before. Measured as an absolute change and shown only where it is at least ten notices — a buyer going from one notice to four is a 300% rise and means nothing.

buyer	February 2016	March 2016	change
Centre for Process Innovation Limited	26	0	-26
Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council	45	28	-17
LGSS	5	16	+11
High Peak Borough Council & Staffordshire Moorlands District Council	11	1	-10
Milton Keynes City Council	12	2	-10

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of March 2016

contract	buyer	won by	value
South West Region Multi Activity Contract	Ministry of Defence, DIO, Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO)	Compass Contract Services UK Limited, Trading as ESS	£445,468,500
Provision of Testing Services	The Construction Industry Training Board	Pearson Professional Assessments Limited	£100,000,000
Provision of Occupational Health Services to the MPS	Metropolitan Police Service	Working on Wellbeing Limited (t/a Optima Health)	£70,000,000
Community Independence Service	NHS Shared Business Services	Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust	£31,000,000
Land and Development Opportunity, Plymouth, South West UK	Spectrum Housing Group	Kier Living Limited	£30,000,000
YPO - 000713 Air Fresheners and Odour Neutralisers	YPO	Bunzl Catering Supplies +9	£29,000,000
Sexual and Reproductive Health Services for Stockport, Tameside and Trafford Councils	Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council	Central Manchester Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust	£21,000,000
Conference Park Redevelopment	THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM	Galliford Try Building Ltd	£20,000,000
Provision of School Meals	LGSS	named in the notice	£12,000,000
East Cambridgeshire District Leisure Centre Design and Build	EAST CAMBRIDGESHIRE DISTRICT COUNCIL	Pellikaan Holding (Belgie) NV	£11,000,000

Contracts published in March 2016 that name a winning supplier, ranked by the value the buyer published, excluding those flagged as a maximum rather than a price. Figures are as published; gvtcx does not adjust them. A large contract is often a multi-year framework, so the value is what may be spent over its whole life — and where several suppliers share one framework, each is shown against the framework's full value rather than its own share.

how this was counted

Notices published in March 2016 across Contracts Finder, Find a Tender, Public Contracts Scotland and Sell2Wales, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Counts are of contracting processes, not published notices: a tender and its award notice are one contract and are counted once.

There is no total value on this page, deliberately. Published values repeat a framework's entire ceiling against every supplier on it, so a month containing one large framework would read as a spending spike that never happened. The median excludes anything flagged as a ceiling, and the reasoning is set out in full here. Where a total IS defensible — contracts awarded to a single supplier, with no framework — it is on the direct awards page.

A month stays open to revision: publishers backdate, so figures for the current month and the one before it may still move.