month in review
UK public procurement in April 2017
3,465 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in April 2017 by 795 buying organisations, 8% down on March 2017. 8.3% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- National Audit Office178
- Nottingham Trent University97
- Transport for London91
- Highways Agency80
- Crown Commercial Service74
- Home Office63
- SE Shared Services63
- Defra Network eTendering Portal57
- FCDO Services51
- University of the West of England50
who won most
- Deloitte29
- KPMG Fees LLP Account26
- allpay Limited22
- Bdo15
- Moore Stephens14
- Grant Thornton UK LLP13
- Software Box Limited13
- WSP UK Limited13
- PricewaterhouseCoopers12
- Ernst & Young11
biggest changes on March 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 | March 2017 | April 2017 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Audit Office | 0 | 178 | +178 |
| Homes & Communities Agency | 139 | 1 | -138 |
| Nottingham Trent University | 6 | 97 | +91 |
| Highways Agency | 12 | 80 | +68 |
| Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council | 99 | 42 | -57 |
| UCLPartners Procurement Service (PPS) | 54 | 0 | -54 |
| FCDO Services | 0 | 51 | +51 |
| University of the West of England | 0 | 50 | +50 |
| Buckinghamshire County Council | 70 | 29 | -41 |
| Isle of Wight Council | 41 | 3 | -38 |
what was bought
- construction work 417
- business and professional services 413
- health and social care 321
- IT services 246
- architecture and engineering 238
- software and information systems 183
- education and training 147
- transport services 136
- research and development 104
- vehicles and transport equipment 101
the biggest awarded contracts of April 2017
Contracts published in April 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 April 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.