month in review

UK public procurement in January 2017

2,842 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in January 2017 by 699 buying organisations, 34% up on December 2016. 3.1% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

2,842

buyers

699

named a winner

1,810

awarded directly

3.1%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on December 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	December 2016	January 2017	change
Ministry of Justice	9	139	+130
University of the West of England	0	119	+119
Newcastle University	1	63	+62
Transport for London	17	69	+52
UK Shared Business Services Limited	37	70	+33
Babcock International Group PLC	33	4	-29
Cumbria County Council	35	8	-27
SE Shared Services	20	46	+26
Department for International Development	2	25	+23
Department for Transport	8	31	+23

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of January 2017

contract	buyer	won by	value
DWP Estates Security Services	DEPARTMENT FOR WORK AND PENSIONS	G4S SECURE SOLUTIONS (UK) LIMITED	£900,000,000
Wakefield Property and Facilities Management Project	Wakefield Council Customer Service	Engie Services Limited	£500,000,000
Torpedoes In Service Support	Ministry of Defence, Weapons, Torpedoes, Tomahawk and Harpoon (TTH) Project Team	BAE Systems Maritime Services	£400,000,000
Mercant Acquiring - non AMEX	Transport for London	Barclays Bank PLC trading as Barclaycard Payment Acceptance,	£380,000,000
Electronic Monitoring & Field Services and Service and System Integration	Ministry Of Justice	Capita Business Services Limited	£229,000,000
MCLF-Food/Catering-2011-Supply of Foodstuff-1035	Ministry Of Justice	BFS Group Limited trading as 3663 First for Foodservice +1	£218,000,000
NHS Pharmaceutical Products	Commercial Medicines Unit	named in the notice	£155,000,000
London APMS GP Contracts (T5)	N E L COMMISSIONING SUPPORT UNIT	Argyle Health +9	£125,000,000
Ophthalmic Capital Equipment and Associated Accessories	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	Albert Waeschle Limited +24	£123,000,000
Disposable Wipes for Surface Cleaning and Disinfection	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	Alliance Disposables ltd +32	£93,000,000

Contracts published in January 2017 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 January 2017 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.