month in review

UK public procurement in August 2016

1,356 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in August 2016 by 576 buying organisations, 2% up on July 2016. 0.1% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

1,356

buyers

576

named a winner

372

awarded directly

0.1%

median value

£140,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on July 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	July 2016	August 2016	change
Skills Funding Agency	26	0	-26
Suffolk County Council	19	3	-16
Cumbria County Council	23	11	-12
Noe-cpc	9	21	+12
Wirral Borough Council	0	11	+11
The Litmus Partnership Ltd	13	3	-10

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of August 2016

contract	buyer	won by	value
Cardiac Surgery, Cardiac Rhythm Management, Diagnostic and Interventional Consumables and Associated Products	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	Abbott Laboratories Limited +75	£927,450,000
Link: 2 IT Hardware	NHS Shared Business Services Ltd (NHS SBS)	Centerprise International Ltd +12	£500,000,000
The Provision of Independent Fostering Agency Services	SOUTHAMPTON CITY COUNCIL	Family First Fostering +3	£400,000,000
Campaign Solutions	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£350,000,000
Managed Print and Digital Solutions	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£300,000,000
Multifunctional Devices, Managed Print and Content Services and Records and Information Management	Crown Commercial Service	Please refer to attached list of successful supplier's	£125,000,000
Decontamination Capital Equipment (Endoscopy and Sterile Services) and Associated Accessories	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	Belimed Limited +24	£69,162,000
Vascular Therapy and Associated Products	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	Activa Healthcare +16	£61,474,130
Highway and Transport Services for The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead	The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead	N/A +2	£59,640,000
Powered and Non Powered Wheelchairs including Special Seating	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	Activate For Kids Limited +19	£55,620,000

Contracts published in August 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 August 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.