month in review

UK public procurement in January 2025

6,233 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in January 2025 by 1,545 buying organisations, 4% down on December 2024. 10.3% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

6,233

buyers

1,545

named a winner

4,594

awarded directly

10.3%

median value

£114,388

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on December 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	December 2024	January 2025	change
University of the West of England	64	1	-63
The Crown Estate	71	24	-47
Torbay Council	54	8	-46
North Yorkshire Council	32	73	+41
Ipswich Borough Council	13	51	+38
Transport for London	47	13	-34
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust	4	38	+34
Durham County Council	13	44	+31
Nottinghamshire County Council	61	30	-31
Welland Procurement Unit	2	32	+30

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of January 2025

contract	buyer	won by	value
ACCESS Private Equity Allocators	HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL	Adams Street Partners LLC +1	£2,000,000,000
User Services for Emergency Services Network (ESN)	Home Office	IBM United Kingdom Limited	£1,362,000,000
User Services for Emergency Services Network (ESN)	Secretary of State for the Home Department	IBM United Kingdom Limited	£895,000,000
Digital Diagnostic Solutions	Supply Chain Coordination Limited	Agfa HealthCare IT UK Ltd +55	£700,000,000
Audit and Assurance Services Two (A&AS2)	Crown Commercial Service	named in the notice	£500,000,000
PfH Funded Retrofit Works & Delivery	Procurement for Housing	Bell Group Limited +18	£500,000,000
83_25 Supply of Ambient, Chilled, Frozen Foods and Fresh Fruit, Vegetables and Salads	Espo	A.F.BLAKEMORE AND SON LIMITED (t/a Blakemore Foodservice) +26	£400,000,000
Forestry England Treetop Walkway Experiences	Forestry England for and on behalf of the Forestry Commission	named in the notice	£360,000,000
Multi-Temperature Food Solutions 2025	Supply Chain Coordination Limited	BFS Group LTD T/A Bidfood +26	£354,300,000
Voluntary ex Ante Transparency Notice MOD Armed Forces Media Welfare Services	MINISTRY OF DEFENCE	BFBS	£320,712,000

Contracts published in January 2025 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 2025 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.