month in review

UK public procurement in November 2020

4,681 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in November 2020 by 1,092 buying organisations, 3% up on October 2020. 7.8% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

4,681

buyers

1,092

named a winner

3,345

awarded directly

7.8%

median value

£110,175

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on October 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	October 2020	November 2020	change
University of the West of England	110	14	-96
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)	5	92	+87
Defra Network eTendering Portal	69	124	+55
Department of Health and Social Care	136	95	-41
Birmingham Childrens Hospital	0	34	+34
UK Research and Innovation	44	72	+28
NHS Digital	3	26	+23
Liverpool City Council	28	6	-22
FCDO Services	49	27	-22
Ministry of Defence	72	51	-21

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of November 2020

contract	buyer	won by	value
Energy Efficiency Measures & Associated Works	LHC for the Scottish Procurement Alliance (SPA)	Aaron Services Limited +28	£3,200,000,000
Lower Thames Crossing - Tunnels and Approaches	Highways England	Bouygues Travaux Publics +1	£2,300,000,000
Software Design & Implementation Services	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£1,500,000,000
Back Office Software	Crown Commercial Service	Advanced Systems Software and Solutions Ltd +30	£1,200,000,000
Global Bulk Fuels Services (GBFS)	MINISTRY OF DEFENCE	Associated Energy Group, LLC +15	£800,281,000
Covid-19 Home Testing Fulfilment Services	Department of Health and Social Care	ROYAL MAIL GROUP LIMITED	£550,000,000
SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Qualitative Test Kits	Department of Health and Social Care	INNOVA MEDICAL GROUP INC	£496,080,000
Primer Design Ltd - Innovation - COVID19 Testing equipment	Department of Health and Social Care	Primer Design Ltd	£406,004,506
Provision of an Energy from Waste Facility	Aberdeen City Council	EFW Ness Limited	£364,920,000
Randox Laboratories Ltd Testing Services	Department of Health and Social Care	Randox Laboratories Ltd	£346,500,000

Contracts published in November 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 November 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.