month in review
UK public procurement in May 2016
1,272 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in May 2016 by 511 buying organisations, 9% up on April 2016. 0% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- Skills Funding Agency26
- SE Shared Services25
- NHS Shared Business Services20
- Derbyshire County Council19
- Leicester City Council16
- Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council16
- Noe-cpc15
- University of Derby15
- UK Shared Business Services Limited14
- Milton Keynes City Council12
who won most
- Serco Limited8
- Calderdale College5
- Learndirect Ltd3
- Abby Welding Ltd2
- APCOA Parking (UK) Limited2
- Banner Group Limited2
- Bell Group UK2
- Community Integrated Care2
- Creative Support2
- East Sussex Out Patient Services Ltd (ESOPS)2
biggest changes on April 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 | April 2016 | May 2016 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skills Funding Agency | 3 | 26 | +23 |
| Milton Keynes City Council | 2 | 12 | +10 |
| SE Shared Services | 35 | 25 | -10 |
what was bought
- construction work 210
- health and social care 145
- education and training 104
- business and professional services 81
- architecture and engineering 80
- repair and maintenance 58
- waste, cleaning and environment 57
- IT services 46
- software and information systems 41
- construction materials 39
the biggest awarded contracts of May 2016
Contracts published in May 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 May 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.