month in review

UK public procurement in March 2019

4,765 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in March 2019 by 1,069 buying organisations, 13% up on February 2019. 7.9% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

4,765

buyers

1,069

named a winner

3,452

awarded directly

7.9%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on February 2019

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	February 2019	March 2019	change
Newcastle University	28	91	+63
Nottinghamshire Police Force	1	41	+40
Government Internal Audit Agency	39	0	-39
National Audit Office	42	3	-39
East Midlands Strategic Commercial Unit	0	36	+36
Ministry of Justice	13	49	+36
Birmingham Childrens Hospital	34	0	-34
FCDO Services	32	1	-31
City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council	6	34	+28
Suffolk Sourcing	35	63	+28

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of March 2019

contract	buyer	won by	value
G-Cloud 11	Crown Commercial Service	CONNECT INTERNET SOLUTIONS LIMITED	£1,950,000,000
RM1069 Crown Hosting	Crown Commercial Service	Ark Data Centres Limited	£700,000,000
UKRI FM19001 BGS Hard FM Services Request for Proposal	UK SHARED BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED	CBRE MANAGED SERVICES LIMITED	£577,800,000
Dynamic Purchasing System for the Provision of Passenger Transport Services	Dumfries and Galloway Council	A2BEE TRAVEL +19	£525,300,000
National Civil Engineering and Infrastructure Framework - Scotland	Scape Procure Scotland Limited	Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Limited	£500,000,000
Foundation Apprenticeships 2019-21	The Skills Development Scotland Co. Limited	Aberlour Child Care Trust +21	£345,800,000
Approved Enforcement Agencies	Ministry of Justice.	JBW Group Limited	£280,000,000
3197_19 Refuse Collection and Related Services	ESPO	Serco Environmental Services	£246,000,000
Fixed Radiation Detection Systems, Identification Devices	Home Office	Serco Limited	£149,276,887
South West Kent Waste Partnership - Waste Services Contract 2019	Dartford Borough Council	Urbaser Ltd & Urbaser SAU	£121,340,555

Contracts published in March 2019 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 March 2019 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.