month in review
UK public procurement in October 2020
4,556 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in October 2020 by 1,062 buying organisations, 21% up on September 2020. 8.3% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- Department of Health and Social Care136
- University of the West of England110
- UK Shared Business Services Limited99
- Ministry of Defence72
- Defra Network eTendering Portal69
- Suffolk Sourcing64
- Leeds City Council52
- FCDO Services49
- Department for Transport46
- UK Research and Innovation44
who won most
- Wilkin Chapman LLP16
- Harvey Nash14
- Phoenix Software Limited14
- Dell Corporation Limited13
- Insight Direct (UK) Ltd13
- Kpmg Llp13
- Softcat PLC13
- XMA Limited12
- Deloitte LLP10
- Hays Specialist Recruitment Ltd10
biggest changes on September 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 | September 2020 | October 2020 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of the West of England | 0 | 110 | +110 |
| NHS England | 86 | 9 | -77 |
| FCDO Services | 1 | 49 | +48 |
| Newcastle University | 3 | 34 | +31 |
| Department for Transport | 16 | 46 | +30 |
| North Yorkshire Council | 4 | 33 | +29 |
| Suffolk Sourcing | 93 | 64 | -29 |
| Liverpool City Council | 1 | 28 | +27 |
| Transport for London | 37 | 10 | -27 |
| University of Glasgow | 0 | 27 | +27 |
what was bought
- construction work 667
- business and professional services 472
- IT services 361
- architecture and engineering 287
- health and social care 248
- software and information systems 243
- education and training 184
- research and development 174
- repair and maintenance 154
- security and defence equipment 143
the biggest awarded contracts of October 2020
Contracts published in October 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 October 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.