month in review

UK public procurement in February 2020

4,376 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in February 2020 by 1,080 buying organisations, 5% down on January 2020. 5% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

4,376

buyers

1,080

named a winner

2,963

awarded directly

median value

£93,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on January 2020

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	January 2020	February 2020	change
Derby City Council	57	154	+97
FCDO Services	60	1	-59
National Highways	115	56	-59
Buckinghamshire County Council	74	35	-39
Ministry of Defence	30	68	+38
Bfi	36	5	-31
Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat)	4	35	+31
Home Office	72	43	-29
Leeds City Council	38	66	+28
Newcastle University	33	5	-28

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of February 2020

contract	buyer	won by	value
Bath Clean Air Zone (CAZ) Financial Assistance Scheme	Bath and North East Somerset Council	CLM Fleet Management PLC +4	£1,500,000,000
Supercomputing 2020+	Met Office	Microsoft Limited	£854,000,000
Stirling House	LiveWest Homes Limited	Coyde Construction	£450,000,000
Northern Isles Ferry Service	Transport Scotland	Serco Group PLC +1	£371,000,000
Passsport Production and Associated Services Agreement	Home Office	Gemalto UK Limited	£262,000,000
Syringes Needles and Associated Products	NHS SUPPLY CHAIN	AAH Pharmaceuticals Limited +41	£240,000,000
Cambridgeshire County Council Supported Living Services for Adults with a Learning Disability	Cambridgeshire County Council	Care Solutions Group Ltd +20	£226,000,000
Major Building Works	Telford & Wrekin Council	Morris Property Ltd	£200,000,000
NEPO307 Supply of Liquid Fuels	Association Of North East Councils	OIL NRG LIMITED	£160,000,000
Contracts Finder Notice - Patient Mobility Products and Services	HealthTrust Europe LLP (HTE) acting as agent for the University Hospitals of Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust ("UHCW")	AJM Healthcare +11	£158,875,000

Contracts published in February 2020 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 February 2020 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.