month in review
UK public procurement in December 2018
2,766 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in December 2018 by 788 buying organisations, 25% down on November 2018. 7% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- Suffolk Sourcing53
- UK Shared Business Services Limited49
- National Highways47
- Department for Education41
- The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office41
- FCDO Services39
- Department for Transport37
- London Borough of Enfield34
- SE Shared Services34
- Public Health England33
who won most
- Central Taxis Ltd T/A Go Carz14
- Insight Direct (UK) Ltd14
- Wilkin Chapman LLP11
- Wsp9
- Arup7
- Carwood Motor Units Limited7
- Perfect Circle7
- Atkins6
- Deloitte LLP6
- Phoenix Software Limited6
biggest changes on November 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 | November 2018 | December 2018 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transport for London | 81 | 4 | -77 |
| Home Office | 81 | 10 | -71 |
| SE Shared Services | 85 | 34 | -51 |
| Northern Housing Consortium Limited | 52 | 5 | -47 |
| The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office | 0 | 41 | +41 |
| FCDO Services | 74 | 39 | -35 |
| UK Shared Business Services Limited | 83 | 49 | -34 |
| Derby City Council | 34 | 3 | -31 |
| Department for Transport | 6 | 37 | +31 |
| London Borough of Enfield | 3 | 34 | +31 |
what was bought
- construction work 357
- business and professional services 269
- health and social care 228
- IT services 199
- architecture and engineering 160
- software and information systems 158
- research and development 152
- education and training 114
- transport services 108
- repair and maintenance 83
the biggest awarded contracts of December 2018
Contracts published in December 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 December 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.