month in review

UK public procurement in April 2018

3,081 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in April 2018 by 767 buying organisations, 7% down on March 2018. 7.8% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

3,081

buyers

767

named a winner

2,119

awarded directly

7.8%

median value

£95,655

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on March 2018

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 2018	April 2018	change
Department for Work and Pensions	19	75	+56
Darlington Borough Council	17	51	+34
Bristol City Council	47	81	+34
Ministry of Defence	58	25	-33
Defra Network eTendering Portal	51	19	-32
Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council	54	23	-31
Your Homes Newcastle Ltd	35	4	-31
Nottingham Trent University	61	30	-31
Buckinghamshire County Council	26	55	+29
Valuation Office Agency	2	30	+28

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of April 2018

contract	buyer	won by	value
YPO - 000833 Apprenticeships and Associated Training	YPO	Anglia Ruskin University +75	£8,000,000,000
Supply Teachers and Temporary Staff in Educational Establishments	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£1,000,000,000
Flexible Procurement and Supply of Half Hourly (HH), Non-Half Hourly (NHH), Metered and Unmetered Electricity with Meter Operations and Additional Services - Y18003	Kent County Council (via LASER)	Connected Energy Ltd +7	£900,000,000
191_20 Electricity (Half Hourly Metered, Non Half Hourly and Unmetered Supply)	Espo	Total Gas & Power Ltd	£750,000,000
Y18002 - Flexible Procurement and Supply of Natural Gas Daily Metered and Non-Daily Metered including Product Class 1,2,3 and 4 with Additional Services	Kent County Council (via LASER)	Corona Energy Retail 4 Ltd +3	£600,000,000
G-Cloud 10	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£600,000,000
Permanent Recruitment	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£300,000,000
Travel Management	Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation	Click Travel Ltd +2	£300,000,000
Somerset CCG - Integrated Urgent Care	NHS SOUTH, CENTRAL AND WEST COMMISSIONING SUPPORT UNIT	DEVON DOCTORS ON CALL LTD	£152,085,750
Ceremonial Gown and Photography Services	London Universities Purchasing Consortium	Graduation Attire +3	£136,000,000

Contracts published in April 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 April 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.