month in review

UK public procurement in May 2021

6,347 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in May 2021 by 1,330 buying organisations, 2% down on April 2021. 6.7% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

6,347

buyers

1,330

named a winner

4,721

awarded directly

6.7%

median value

£102,653

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on April 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	April 2021	May 2021	change
Department for Transport	42	119	+77
FCDO Services	16	89	+73
Ministry of Justice	50	116	+66
Department for Education	109	45	-64
NHS Property Services Limited	1	61	+60
NHS England & NHS Improvement North East and Yorkshire	58	1	-57
West Dunbartonshire Council	1	49	+48
Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office	34	78	+44
Bristol City Council	90	47	-43
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)	100	60	-40

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of May 2021

contract	buyer	won by	value
636_21 Vehicle Charging Infrastructure 2 (VCI 2)	Espo	Atkins Limited +48	£1,000,000,000
Servicing, Maintenance and Compliance (Gas, M&E and Buildings) of Council Managed Assets - Term Service Contract	Portsmouth City Council	Liberty Gas Group Limited	£300,000,000
Pharmacy Homecare Services - Low and Mid Tech - T20/0418	NHS South West - Acutes	Alcura UK Ltd +8	£277,865,000
Responsive Repairs and Voids	Longhurst Group Limited	Fortem Solutions Limited +3	£247,770,638
Funded Early Learning and Childcare	Glasgow City Council	Adelaides Nursery +75	£186,414,798
Professional Consultancy Services	Telford & Wrekin Council	Focus Consultants (UK) Limited +4	£139,500,000
Community Wellbeing Services	KINGSTON-UPON-HULL CITY COUNCIL	Be Caring Ltd +16	£122,651,620
83_21 Grocery, Fresh, Chilled and Frozen Foods	ESPO	BFS Group Limited T/A Bidfood +15	£120,000,000
Carpentry works at Grange road, Cradley	BROMFORD HOUSING GROUP LIMITED	M E Bishop Carpentry Ltd	£116,983,000
AS09292	HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL	named in the notice	£115,000,000

Contracts published in May 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 May 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.