month in review

UK public procurement in November 2021

6,933 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in November 2021 by 1,428 buying organisations, level with October 2021. 7.9% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

6,933

buyers

1,428

named a winner

4,923

awarded directly

7.9%

median value

£92,165

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on October 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	October 2021	November 2021	change
Defra Network eTendering Portal	126	288	+162
Surrey County Council	127	23	-104
Maritime and Coastguard Agency	35	127	+92
London Borough of Haringey	114	36	-78
The University of Birmingham	102	33	-69
Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit	91	29	-62
Ministry of Justice	53	108	+55
Cumbria County Council	85	31	-54
UK Research and Innovation	53	107	+54
Department of Health and Social Care	99	48	-51

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of November 2021

contract	buyer	won by	value
Facilities Management & Workplace Services	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£35,000,000,000
Storage, Distribution, Kitting and Associated Services	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£6,500,000,000
Big Data and Analytics	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£2,000,000,000
Fuel Cards and Associated Services	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£1,200,000,000
ESCC LC Highways Infrastructure Services 2023 - 2030	East Sussex County Council	Balfour Beatty Living Places Limited +2	£730,000,000
Emergency Services Network (ESN) - Lot 2 User Services	Home Office	MOTOROLA LTD	£600,000,000
Highways Delivery Partner	Cheshire west and Chester Borough Council	NO AWARD MADE	£400,000,000
Production and Delivery of Protector CAN	Ministry of Defence	General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc	£343,595,761
South Thamesmead Phases 2 and 3 Joint Venture Partnership	Peabody Trust	Lovell Partnerships Limited	£300,000,000
Integrated Street Cleansing, Waste Collections and Winter Maintenance Services	Brent Council	Veolia ES (UK) Ltd	£300,000,000

Contracts published in November 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 November 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.