month in review
UK public procurement in March 2017
3,778 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in March 2017 by 811 buying organisations, 35% up on February 2017. 7% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- Homes & Communities Agency139
- Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council99
- Transport for London98
- Crown Commercial Service92
- Buckinghamshire County Council70
- Defra Network eTendering Portal65
- UK Shared Business Services Limited59
- SE Shared Services57
- UCLPartners Procurement Service (PPS)54
- Department for International Development42
who won most
- WYG Engineering Limited14
- Alpha IOW Ltd13
- Software Box Limited13
- GVA Grimley10
- Insight Direct (UK) Ltd10
- Malikshaw9
- McGinley Support Services Limited9
- Morson Human Resources Limited9
- WSP UK Limited9
- DTZ Debenham Tie Leung8
biggest changes on February 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 | February 2017 | March 2017 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homes & Communities Agency | 38 | 139 | +101 |
| Buckinghamshire County Council | 1 | 70 | +69 |
| Transport for London | 34 | 98 | +64 |
| UCLPartners Procurement Service (PPS) | 3 | 54 | +51 |
| Crown Commercial Service | 50 | 92 | +42 |
| Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council | 58 | 99 | +41 |
| Mod De&s Iss Corsham | 3 | 39 | +36 |
| Isle of Wight Council | 7 | 41 | +34 |
| Water Services Regulation Authority | 0 | 33 | +33 |
| Defra Network eTendering Portal | 38 | 65 | +27 |
what was bought
- construction work 521
- health and social care 321
- business and professional services 314
- architecture and engineering 209
- IT services 206
- software and information systems 169
- research and development 150
- education and training 142
- transport services 129
- repair and maintenance 116
the biggest awarded contracts of March 2017
Contracts published in March 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 March 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.