month in review

UK public procurement in January 2018

3,983 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in January 2018 by 826 buying organisations, 54% up on December 2017. 4.8% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

3,983

buyers

826

named a winner

2,664

awarded directly

4.8%

median value

£105,263

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on December 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	December 2017	January 2018	change
Home Office	6	347	+341
Department for Education	30	180	+150
NHS Arden and Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit	16	122	+106
University of the West of England	0	49	+49
Birmingham Childrens Hospital	47	5	-42
Ministry of Justice	15	53	+38
Crown Commercial Service	49	84	+35
Government Digital Service	31	0	-31
Department for Transport	3	32	+29
National Highways	16	43	+27

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of January 2018

contract	buyer	won by	value
Facilities Management Marketplace	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£12,000,000,000
Provision of Technical Services	Sellafield Ltd	National Nuclear Laboratory Ltd	£650,000,000
Environmental Services relating to: Waste Disposal (Lot 1), Waste Collection (Lot 2), Street Environment (Lot 3),Parks Management and Grounds Maintenance Services (Lot 4)	London Borough of Bromley	idverde Limited +1	£506,000,000
Robotic Surgery, Consumables and related Services	NHS Shared Business Services Ltd (NHS SBS)	Intuitive Surgical +2	£300,000,000
HIGHWAYS & TRANSPORT MAINTENANCE & CONSTRUCTION CONTRACT	Wokingham Borough Council	VolkerHighways Ltd +1	£241,000,000
Waste and Recycling Collection, Street and Public Open Space Cleansing Services Contract	Cornwall Council	Biffa Muncipal Ltd	£220,000,000
Community Health Services	Attain Health Management Services	East London NHS Foundation Trust	£200,833,873
Legal Services	NHS Shared Business Services Ltd (NHS SBS)	Addleshaw Goddard LLP +27	£100,000,000
Winter Maintenance Products and Services	Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation	COMPASS MINERALS UK LIMITED +6	£100,000,000
376F_18 Library Stock	Espo	Askews Library Services Limited +4	£80,000,000

Contracts published in January 2018 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 January 2018 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.