month in review
UK public procurement in February 2024
5,863 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in February 2024 by 1,416 buying organisations, 28% down on January 2024. 8.6% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- Ministry of Defence125
- UK Research and Innovation110
- UK Shared Business Services Limited108
- Westmorland and Furness Council95
- London Borough of Haringey77
- Surrey County Council70
- Cumberland Council67
- Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit67
- National Highways63
- NHS Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board60
who won most
- Softcat PLC35
- CDW Limited19
- WSP UK Limited18
- Computacenter (UK) Limited17
- Insight Direct (UK) Ltd14
- Ove Arup & Partners Limited14
- 24x7 Ltd13
- Deloitte LLP13
- Brown Glass Healthcare Services11
- Eville and Jones (GB) Ltd11
biggest changes on January 2024
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 | January 2024 | February 2024 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| FCDO Services | 122 | 14 | -108 |
| North Yorkshire Council | 125 | 36 | -89 |
| UK Research and Innovation | 193 | 110 | -83 |
| Ministry of Justice | 112 | 37 | -75 |
| UK Shared Business Services Limited | 171 | 108 | -63 |
| NHS Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board | 2 | 60 | +58 |
| Health & Safety Executive | 4 | 59 | +55 |
| NHS England | 97 | 45 | -52 |
| Department for Education | 88 | 37 | -51 |
| Nottingham City Council | 76 | 26 | -50 |
what was bought
- health and social care 796
- construction work 687
- business and professional services 627
- IT services 352
- architecture and engineering 336
- software and information systems 319
- transport services 284
- education and training 266
- research and development 216
- repair and maintenance 168
the biggest awarded contracts of February 2024
Contracts published in February 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 February 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.