month in review

UK public procurement in April 2021

6,477 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in April 2021 by 1,308 buying organisations, 11% down on March 2021. 8.4% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

6,477

buyers

1,308

named a winner

5,022

awarded directly

8.4%

median value

£100,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on March 2021

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	March 2021	April 2021	change
Public Health England	216	47	-169
Department of Health and Social Care	243	106	-137
Cardiff City Council	18	103	+85
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)	178	100	-78
Defra Network eTendering Portal	171	101	-70
NHS England & NHS Improvement North East and Yorkshire	3	58	+55
Scottish Government	83	36	-47
Bristol City Council	47	90	+43
Cumbria County Council	97	140	+43
Intellectual Property Office	0	43	+43

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of April 2021

contract	buyer	won by	value
Imaging, Radiotherapy, Endoscopy, Ancillary Devices and related goods & services	NHS Supply Chain	6 Wildflower Way, Boucher Road, Belfast, BT12 6TA +80	£3,720,500,000
Contact Centres and Business Services	Crown Commercial Service	ACCENTURE (UK) LIMITED +17	£3,500,000,000
RM6099 Transport Technology and Associated Services	Crown Commercial Service	21ST CENTURY PASSENGER SYSTEMS LIMITED +1	£2,500,000,000
Procurement of an Architect Led Design Team for the Redevelopment of Whipps Cross Hospital	Barts Health NHS Trust	Ryder Architecture LTD	£2,402,779,041
Private Sector Development Partner for the West Territory	Scottish Futures Trust Limited	Hub West Scotland Limited	£1,200,000,000
Havering estate regeneration partner - property/asset JV company	London Boroug of Havering	Wates construction Ltd	£1,177,000,000
Project Reach	Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd	Digital Reach Partners Limited +1	£1,000,000,000
Multifunctional Devices (MFD's), Print and Digital Workflow Software Services and Managed Print Service	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£850,000,000
Uniserve	Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)	Uniserve	£572,890,310
AASC - Asylum Accommodation & Support Services Contract Scotland	ATAMIS LTD	Mears Limited	£514,000,000

Contracts published in April 2021 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 April 2021 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.