month in review

UK public procurement in May 2017

3,142 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in May 2017 by 809 buying organisations, 9% down on April 2017. 6.6% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

3,142

buyers

809

named a winner

1,950

awarded directly

6.6%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on April 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	April 2017	May 2017	change
National Audit Office	178	1	-177
Nottingham Trent University	97	4	-93
Home Office	63	9	-54
FCDO Services	51	0	-51
Transport for London	91	40	-51
University of the West of England	50	1	-49
Highways Agency	80	33	-47
Birmingham Childrens Hospital	36	3	-33
Radioactive Waste Management Limited	1	33	+32
Leicester City Council	11	42	+31

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of May 2017

contract	buyer	won by	value
Supply, Delivery and Installation of Furniture and Associated Services	Crown Commercial Service	F.C. Brown (Steel Equipment) Ltd	£330,000,000
UK Deployable Food Programmme	Ministry of Defence, Land Equipment, Other	Vestey Foods (UK) Ltd	£120,000,000
Care and Support at Home	Bournemouth Borough Council	Agincare Group Ltd +16	£120,000,000
5107 - Invitation to Tender Glove Box Systems	Sellafield Ltd	Cavendish Nuclear	£98,000,000
Finance and Complex Legal Services Panel Agreement	Crown Commercial Service	Ashurst LLP	£90,000,000
Soft Facilities Management Tender on behalf of The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust	North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative (NOE CPC)	Berendsen Healthcare Limited +1	£90,000,000
83_17 Food - Grocery, Frozen and Multi-temperature	ESPO	BFS Group Limited - T/A Bidfood +9	£76,000,000
Provision of Community Care Bed Services on behalf of NHS Leeds South & East Clinical Commissioning Group	NHS Shared Business Services	Camellia Care Ltd +2	£71,422,500
YPO - 000550 Emergency Services Uniforms and associated products	YPO	Aegis Engineering Limited +18	£60,000,000
Insurance and Associated Services for Colleges	CRESCENT PURCHASING LIMITED	Butterworth Spengler Commercial Limited trading as FE Protect +4	£60,000,000

Contracts published in May 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 May 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.