month in review
UK public procurement in September 2025
8,674 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in September 2025 by 1,526 buying organisations, 11% up on August 2025. 26.4% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.
most active buyers
- Bristol City Council404
- Leicester City Council326
- UK Research and Innovation272
- Darlington Borough Council149
- Suffolk County Council146
- Surrey County Council109
- Ministry of Defence99
- Buckinghamshire Council - e-Tendering System82
- Birmingham City Council77
- Somerset Council75
who won most
- Care Line Homecare Limited70
- Hansom Airport Taxis Ltd69
- Softcat PLC61
- Springfield Home Care Services Limited60
- Azoom Taxis53
- Skyline Taxis46
- Hansom Taxis Leicester Ltd36
- Constellia Public Ltd30
- Azoom28
- Phoenix Software Limited26
biggest changes on August 2025
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 | August 2025 | September 2025 | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol City Council | 48 | 404 | +356 |
| Leicester City Council | 35 | 326 | +291 |
| Surrey County Council | 343 | 109 | -234 |
| Darlington Borough Council | 7 | 149 | +142 |
| NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board | 126 | 13 | -113 |
| UK Research and Innovation | 166 | 272 | +106 |
| Suffolk County Council | 236 | 146 | -90 |
| Somerset Council | 3 | 75 | +72 |
| Birmingham City Council | 25 | 77 | +52 |
| Hampshire County Council | 81 | 29 | -52 |
what was bought
- transport services 835
- health and social care 761
- construction work 747
- business and professional services 670
- architecture and engineering 438
- IT services 372
- software and information systems 362
- vehicles and transport equipment 237
- education and training 233
- repair and maintenance 203
the biggest awarded contracts of September 2025
Contracts published in September 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 September 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.