month in review

UK public procurement in April 2019

4,897 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in April 2019 by 1,067 buying organisations, 3% up on March 2019. 7.1% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

4,897

buyers

1,067

named a winner

3,539

awarded directly

7.1%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on March 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	March 2019	April 2019	change
FCDO Services	1	115	+114
Home Office	72	150	+78
National Highways	74	150	+76
NHS Digital	19	84	+65
Radioactive Waste Management Limited	9	62	+53
Newcastle University	91	41	-50
UK Shared Business Services Limited	119	74	-45
Scottish Government	82	42	-40
East Midlands Strategic Commercial Unit	36	0	-36
Ministry of Justice	49	17	-32

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of April 2019

contract	buyer	won by	value
Supply of Energy and Ancillary Services	Crown Commercial Service	Corona Energy Limited +5	£10,000,000,000
Technology Products and Associated Services	Crown Commercial Service	The Minister for the Cabinet Office acting through Crown Commercial Service	£6,500,000,000
FMSP Submarine Engineering at Devonport and Clyde	Ministry of Defence, Ships, Other	Devonport Royal Dockyard Limited	£2,114,000,000
FMSP Naval Base Services at Devonport	Ministry of Defence, Ships, Other	Devonport Royal Dockyard Limited	£860,000,000
FMSP Ships Engineering Management (Class Output Management, Waterfront Technical Authority and Design Management Services) and Delivery at Portsmouth	Ministry of Defence, Ships, Other	BAE Systems Maritime Services	£812,000,000
FMSP Ships Engineering Management and Delivery at Devonport, Clyde and Rosyth	Ministry of Defence, Ships, Other	Devonport Royal Dockyard Limited	£789,000,000
FMSP Hard Facilities Management and Alongside Sercvices at Portsmouth	Ministry of Defence, Ships, Other	Future Maritime Support Programme	£732,000,000
FMSP Hard Facilities Management and Alongside Sercvices at Clyde	Ministry of Defence, Ships, Other	Babcock Marine (Clyde) Ltd	£421,000,000
Major Construction Works - General 1 000 000 GBP - 4 600 000 GBP	City of London Corporation	8build Limited +5	£200,000,000
FS1-C: Fire Safety Consultancy and Fire Risk Assessors	LHC for the Scottish Procurement Alliance (SPA)	FCS-live Ltd +9	£150,000,000

Contracts published in April 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 April 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.