month in review
UK public procurement in May 2020
2,864 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in May 2020 by 742 buying organisations, 4% down on April 2020. 12.1% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- FCDO Services186
- University of Nottingham (The)152
- UK Shared Business Services Limited55
- Radioactive Waste Management Limited43
- Leeds City Council42
- Department for Transport40
- University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust37
- Ministry of Justice35
- Scottish Government34
- Department of Health and Social Care30
who won most
- Morson International22
- LA International Computer Consultants Ltd20
- Specialist Computer Centres PLC20
- Smartsourcing PLC16
- Capita Business Services13
- Computacenter (UK) Limited13
- Hays Specialist Recruitment Ltd13
- Harvey Nash11
- Infosys Limited11
- Certes Computing Ltd10
biggest changes on April 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 | April 2020 | May 2020 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Nottingham (The) | 0 | 152 | +152 |
| University of the West of England | 92 | 0 | -92 |
| FCDO Services | 119 | 186 | +67 |
| Newcastle University | 79 | 13 | -66 |
| Radioactive Waste Management Limited | 1 | 43 | +42 |
| UK Shared Business Services Limited | 89 | 55 | -34 |
| Procurement Assist Limited c/o Integrated Facilities Management Bolton Ltd (iFM Bolton) | 33 | 0 | -33 |
| Birmingham Childrens Hospital | 30 | 0 | -30 |
| Darlington Borough Council | 44 | 15 | -29 |
| The University of Birmingham | 1 | 29 | +28 |
what was bought
- construction work 366
- business and professional services 339
- IT services 263
- architecture and engineering 216
- software and information systems 193
- health and social care 146
- research and development 137
- education and training 116
- medical and pharmaceutical 102
- repair and maintenance 90
the biggest awarded contracts of May 2020
Contracts published in May 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 May 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.