month in review

UK public procurement in September 2018

2,960 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in September 2018 by 748 buying organisations, 21% down on August 2018. 5% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

2,960

buyers

748

named a winner

1,964

awarded directly

median value

£109,490

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on August 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	August 2018	September 2018	change
University of the West of England	175	0	-175
Newcastle University	82	2	-80
FCDO Services	123	71	-52
Gloucestershire County Council	64	13	-51
Crown Commercial Service	94	56	-38
SE Shared Services	76	42	-34
British Business Bank	0	29	+29
National Highways	42	66	+24
Suffolk Sourcing	112	89	-23
Sheffield Hallam University	23	3	-20

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of September 2018

contract	buyer	won by	value
Workplace Services (FM Marketplace Phase 2) - Lot 1	Crown Commercial Service	Please refer to the Attachments area for an available list of su	£1,500,000,000
Care and Support in the Home Services (Award Notice)	Kent County Council	121 Care & Mobility Ltd +25	£1,200,000,000
New Reablement Services (NRS)	London Borough of Southwark	Medacs	£1,000,000,201
CA5207 - Supply of Non Half Hourly Electricity, Half Hourly Electricity, Natural Gas and Water/Wastewater	University of Essex	Affinity for Business (Retail) Ltd +4	£350,000,000
Tender for Home Care Provision in Bristol	Bristol City Council	1st Grade Care Ltd +3	£263,573,153
The Provision of ICT Service for Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation Trust	East Of England NHS Collaborative Hub	NHS Shared Business Services Ltd.	£250,000,000
Person Centred Home Care	Blackpool Council	1 Homecare Ltd +11	£130,000,000
Windows, Doorsets and Associated Products	LHC	Anglian Building Products a division of Anglian Windows Ltd +20	£130,000,000
Waste Management Services (Sustainable)	LONDON UNIVERSITIES PURCHASING CONSORTIUM	Biffa Waste Services Limited +13	£100,000,000
AC0366 Help to Live at Home Alliance	Wiltshire Council	Abicare Services Ltd +45	£90,000,000

Contracts published in September 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 September 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.