month in review

UK public procurement in December 2017

2,581 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in December 2017 by 733 buying organisations, 23% down on November 2017. 4.9% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

2,581

buyers

733

named a winner

1,668

awarded directly

4.9%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on November 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	November 2017	December 2017	change
FCDO Services	150	0	-150
University of the West of England	66	0	-66
Birmingham Childrens Hospital	2	47	+45
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council	45	15	-30
The University of Birmingham	38	10	-28
Met Office	28	0	-28
Buckinghamshire County Council	25	52	+27
Durham County Council	9	33	+24
Bristol City Council	13	37	+24
Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council	48	24	-24

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of December 2017

contract	buyer	won by	value
YPO - 000791 The Flexible Procurement and Supply of Electricity for NHH, HH and UMS	Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation	NPOWER LIMITED	£1,200,000,000
CLC4970 Waste Reception, Treatment and RRC Services	Tower Hamlets	Cory Riverside Energy	£250,000,000
Cambridgeshire County Council Supported Living Services for Adults with a Learning Disability	Cambridgeshire County Council	Affinity Trust +3	£226,000,000
RM1056 Lot 1 - Total Facilities Management	Crown Commercial Service	Interserve (Facilities Management) Ltd	£225,000,000
Cambridgeshire County Council Residential Services for Adults with a Learning Disability	Cambridgeshire County Council	Aurora Care and Education OpCo +9	£224,000,000
M27 J4-11 Delivery Partner	Highways England	BAM Nuttall/Morgan Sindall JV (BMJV)	£218,026,120
Southampton Branded Energy Company	SOUTHAMPTON CITY COUNCIL	ROBIN HOOD ENERGY LIMITED	£120,000,000
CDF PC3ab 0024- Delivery Partner for M62 Junction 10-12 Smart Motorways Scheme	Highways England	BAM Nuttall/ Morgan Sindall JV (BMJV)	£103,804,854
Combat Water Supply System (CWSS)	MINISTRY OF DEFENCE	Kellogg, Brown & Root Limited	£100,000,000
NHS 111 and the Integrated Urgent Care Clinical Assessment Service	NHS Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield Clinical Commissioning Group	North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust	£76,506,500

Contracts published in December 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 December 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.