month in review
UK public procurement in January 2024
8,143 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in January 2024 by 1,594 buying organisations, 27% up on December 2023. 9.8% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- UK Research and Innovation193
- UK Shared Business Services Limited171
- Ministry of Defence166
- North Yorkshire Council125
- FCDO Services122
- Ministry of Justice112
- NHS England97
- Westmorland and Furness Council93
- Cumberland Council91
- Department for Education88
who won most
- Nash Squared Limited30
- Softcat PLC29
- Computacenter (UK) Limited27
- Insight Direct (UK) Ltd23
- Phoenix Software Limited23
- Trust Utility Management Ltd21
- CDW Limited20
- Civica UK Limited19
- Dell Corporation Limited19
- Tetra Tech Limited19
biggest changes on December 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 | December 2023 | January 2024 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| FCDO Services | 35 | 122 | +87 |
| UK Shared Business Services Limited | 90 | 171 | +81 |
| North Yorkshire Council | 46 | 125 | +79 |
| Nottingham City Council | 4 | 76 | +72 |
| Coventry University | 7 | 63 | +56 |
| NHS England | 45 | 97 | +52 |
| Newcastle University | 55 | 5 | -50 |
| Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary | 1 | 48 | +47 |
| Buckinghamshire Council | 20 | 58 | +38 |
| Westmorland and Furness Council | 60 | 93 | +33 |
what was bought
- construction work 1,036
- business and professional services 990
- health and social care 812
- IT services 609
- architecture and engineering 507
- software and information systems 481
- transport services 454
- education and training 400
- research and development 278
- vehicles and transport equipment 231
the biggest awarded contracts of January 2024
Contracts published in January 2024 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 January 2024 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.