month in review

UK public procurement in September 2017

2,905 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in September 2017 by 736 buying organisations, 14% down on August 2017. 4.5% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

2,905

buyers

736

named a winner

1,916

awarded directly

4.5%

median value

£99,999

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on August 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	August 2017	September 2017	change
The University Of Nottingham	199	3	-196
Essex County Council	85	6	-79
Birmingham Childrens Hospital	57	0	-57
Darlington Borough Council	34	90	+56
FCDO Services	2	52	+50
Gloucestershire County Council	51	6	-45
Radioactive Waste Management Limited	0	41	+41
SE Shared Services	83	44	-39
University of Leeds	44	9	-35
Newcastle University	39	4	-35

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of September 2017

contract	buyer	won by	value
Management Consultancy Phase 1 Award	Crown Commercial Service	ACCENTURE (UK) LTD +29	£690,000,000
RM3799 Specialist Courier Services	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£400,000,000
1FM Bundle 5 - Cleaning and Associated Services	Transport for London	ABM Facility Services UK Limited,	£322,393,734
Advanced Wound and Skin Care Managed Delivery Service	NHS Shared Business Services Ltd (NHS SBS)	ConvaTec Limited +2	£200,000,000
CP1519-17 Peninsula Fostering in Independent Fostering Agency Placements	Devon County Council	Action for Children +14	£111,754,792
CPU 2094 Care at Home Service for Adults (Lead Providers)	Nottingham City Council	Comfort Call +3	£108,072,000
Lancashire Public Health 0-19 Healthy Child Programme	Lancashire County Council	Virgin Care Services Ltd	£107,850,000
Infusion Pumps Administration Sets and Associated Accessories	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	Applied Medical Technology Ltd +20	£100,000,000
PCF Stage 3.0 Preliminary Design	Highways Agency	Cascade JV (CH2M, Arcadis, COWI)	£67,109,635
1FM3.2 - TfL00926 Pan TfL Premises Maintenance (R&U)	Transport for London	Lanes Group Plc,	£65,222,911

Contracts published in September 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 September 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.