month in review

UK public procurement in October 2019

4,584 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in October 2019 by 1,071 buying organisations, 14% up on September 2019. 5.8% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

4,584

buyers

1,071

named a winner

3,195

awarded directly

5.8%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on September 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	September 2019	October 2019	change
Newcastle University	5	96	+91
Ministry of Justice	22	112	+90
Suffolk Sourcing	101	25	-76
University of the West of England	50	13	-37
Darlington Borough Council	46	13	-33
London Borough of Enfield	60	89	+29
Cheshire East Borough Council	4	31	+27
National Highways	72	46	-26
Surrey County Council	26	5	-21
Middlesbrough Council	19	0	-19

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of October 2019

contract	buyer	won by	value
Digital Outcomes and Specialists 4	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£1,570,000,000
Supply of Naval Valves of Hale Hamilton Manufacture	MINISTRY OF DEFENCE	HALE HAMILTON (VALVES) LIMITED	£800,000,000
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	Saltwood C Of E Primary School	Corona Energy Retail 4 Ltd +3	£600,000,000
Payment Acceptance	Crown Commercial Service	ACCENTURE (UK) LIMITED +15	£450,000,000
General Wound Care	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	3M United Kingdom PLC +55	£360,000,000
Contract Award EJISS - Publication of redacted Contract	MINISTRY OF DEFENCE	Rolls-Royce plc	£346,729,489
PR372019 Integrated Asset Management Contract	Exeter City Council	Mears Limited	£300,000,000
RM6013 Public Sector Vehicle Hire Solutions Award Notice	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£250,000,000
Healthcare Provision for North East Prisons	NHS England (North) Health & Justice - Cumbria & North East	Spectrum Community Health CIC	£240,237,969
Cambridgeshire Residential and Nursing Block Bed Contracts	Cambridgeshire County Council	Black Swan Care Group Limited +9	£209,685,000

Contracts published in October 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 October 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.