month in review

UK public procurement in March 2023

8,969 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in March 2023 by 1,643 buying organisations, 24% up on February 2023. 8.5% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

8,969

buyers

1,643

named a winner

7,012

awarded directly

8.5%

median value

£113,017

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on February 2023

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	February 2023	March 2023	change
Cumbria County Council	119	223	+104
Ministry of Defence	189	277	+88
Transport for London	95	18	-77
East Riding of Yorkshire Council	19	84	+65
London Ambulance Service NHS Trust	5	65	+60
East Sussex County Council	10	60	+50
UK Research and Innovation	227	177	-50
UK Shared Business Services Limited	186	234	+48
NHS Property Services Limited	38	84	+46
Care Quality Commission	7	50	+43

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of March 2023

contract	buyer	won by	value
Technology Products and Associated Services 2	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£12,000,000,000
Postal Services and Solutions	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£1,600,000,000
Extension of South West Wales Regional Contractors Framework	Carmarthenshire County Council	Andrew Scott Limited +23	£1,000,000,000
Innovative Platform for Home Based Services	SOUTHAMPTON CITY COUNCIL	Agincare UK Limited +40	£945,977,955
DIGITAL HEALTH ADVISORY (SBS10225)	N H S Shared Business Services	Accenture (UK) Ltd +40	£500,000,000
NHS Midland & East Branded Medicines, Tranche B & Annual Tranche	NHS England	Abbvie Ltd +34	£480,429,000
ESCC - PS - Contract Award of Lead provider Home Care, including HMP Lewes and Extra Care and Support Schemes	East Sussex County Council	A1 Quality Homecare +6	£348,000,000
Home Support in the Bradford District	City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council	06 Care Limited +27	£308,000,000
Prison Healthcare Services	N E L Commissioning Support Unit	Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust +1	£302,838,669
NHS National Generic Pharmaceuticals Wave 14b	NHS England	Accord-UK Ltd +103	£257,560,490

Contracts published in March 2023 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 March 2023 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.