month in review

UK public procurement in October 2023

8,062 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in October 2023 by 1,603 buying organisations, 2% up on September 2023. 9.4% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

8,062

buyers

1,603

named a winner

6,178

awarded directly

9.4%

median value

£112,000

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on September 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	September 2023	October 2023	change
Health Education England	191	10	-181
Surrey County Council	256	156	-100
Newcastle University	79	2	-77
Suffolk County Council	138	78	-60
London Borough of Lewisham	60	11	-49
London Borough of Haringey	53	101	+48
FCDO Services	137	91	-46
Ministry of Defence	136	173	+37
Darlington Borough Council	41	4	-37
Ministry of Justice	55	91	+36

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of October 2023

contract	buyer	won by	value
YPO - 001140 Managing Recruitment and Resourcing	YPO	ADECCO UK LIMITED +17	£5,000,000,000
Functional Assessment Service (FAS) 2024	Department for Work and Pensions	CAPITA BUSINESS SERVICES LIMITED +3	£2,769,913,640
TC1180 - Wythenshawe Civic Development Partner and Joint Venture Asset Manager Partner	Manchester City Council	Muse Places Limited	£750,000,000
NHS National Generic Pharmaceuticals Wave 14c	NHS England	Abbvie Ltd +124	£637,693,448
NOE CPC Consultancy and Associated Services	North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative	AA Projects Ltd +81	£435,000,000
RFX1000442 - NHS Surrey Heartlands ICB, NHS Frimley ICB, NHSE and SCC Children's Community Health Services	Surrey County Council	HCRG Care Services Limited	£295,064,320
Pathology Service Joint Venture	The Christie NHS Foundation Trust	SYNLAB	£240,000,000
YPO - 001161 - Sustainable Hardware, Asset Recycling and Data Destruction	YPO	ACS Technology Group Ltd +20	£200,000,000
Procedure Packs	NHS Supply Chain	Accrington Surgical Instrument Suppliers Ltd +30	£159,016,667
NW2023-13 NHS Talking Therapies (formerly known as IAPT)	NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board	Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust	£147,000,000

Contracts published in October 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 October 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.