month in review

UK public procurement in August 2026

8,086 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in August 2026 by 1,497 buying organisations, 21% down on July 2026. 22.5% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

most active buyers

• Surrey County Council510
• Suffolk County Council237
• UK Research and Innovation118
• West Northamptonshire Council110
• Leicester City Council108
• National Highways103
• Leicestershire County Council82
• Ministry of Defence82
• Environment Agency64
• Ministry of Justice58

who won most

• Softcat PLC46
• Phoenix Software Limited31
• Xpert Cars31
• Nivo Mobility26
• Courtesy Cars Redhill Ltd24
• STL24
• 24x7 Ltd22
• Angel Cars (woking) LTD22
• Care Line Homecare Limited22
• NHS Supply Chain Coordination Limited (nhssc - Sccl)21

biggest changes on July 2026

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.

what was bought

• construction work 669
• transport services 559
• health and social care 495
• business and professional services 456
• IT services 394
• architecture and engineering 350
• software and information systems 345
• education and training 188
• repair and maintenance 173
• vehicles and transport equipment 144

the biggest awarded contracts of August 2026

Contracts published in August 2026 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 August 2026 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.