month in review
UK public procurement in February 2017
2,798 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in February 2017 by 699 buying organisations, 2% down on January 2017. 4.9% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- SE Shared Services66
- Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council58
- Crown Commercial Service50
- UK Shared Business Services Limited50
- Defra Network eTendering Portal38
- Homes & Communities Agency38
- Ministry of Defence37
- Transport for London34
- Maritime and Coastguard Agency32
- Department for Education31
who won most
- Cleshar Contracts Services Ltd,14
- Depoel Managed Services Ltd10
- Ipsos MORI9
- Insight Direct (UK) Ltd8
- Kpmg Llp8
- Computacenter (UK) Limited7
- Grant Thornton UK LLP7
- NRC Services Limited7
- Vodafone7
- AECOM Limited6
biggest changes on January 2017
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 | January 2017 | February 2017 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ministry of Justice | 139 | 12 | -127 |
| University of the West of England | 119 | 0 | -119 |
| Newcastle University | 63 | 25 | -38 |
| Transport for London | 69 | 34 | -35 |
| Department for Transport | 31 | 1 | -30 |
| Cumbria County Council | 8 | 29 | +21 |
| SE Shared Services | 46 | 66 | +20 |
| UK Shared Business Services Limited | 70 | 50 | -20 |
| Darlington Borough Council | 4 | 23 | +19 |
| Hm Land Registry | 19 | 0 | -19 |
what was bought
- construction work 321
- business and professional services 256
- health and social care 240
- architecture and engineering 178
- IT services 137
- software and information systems 131
- research and development 126
- laboratory and precision equipment 117
- education and training 106
- repair and maintenance 103
the biggest awarded contracts of February 2017
Contracts published in February 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 February 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.