month in review

UK public procurement in September 2026

3,423 UK public sector tenders and contract awards were published in September 2026 by 996 buying organisations, 58% down on August 2026. 22.9% of those with a recorded route to market were awarded directly, without competition.

notices

3,423

buyers

996

named a winner

2,516

awarded directly

22.9%

median value

£72,286

most active buyers

who won most

biggest changes on August 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.

buyer	August 2026	September 2026	change
Surrey County Council	510	72	-438
Suffolk County Council	237	84	-153
Leicestershire County Council	82	13	-69
Ministry of Defence	82	30	-52
National Highways	103	56	-47
Darlington Borough Council	45	2	-43
Environment Agency	64	23	-41
West Sussex County Council	44	5	-39
Hampshire County Council	50	11	-39
Innovate UK	0	38	+38

what was bought

the biggest awarded contracts of September 2026

contract	buyer	won by	value
Bus Franchising Round 1 Tier B	West Yorkshire Combined Authority	E. STOTT & SONS LIMITED +4	£150,500,000
Development Partner for Phase 1 (with potential of future phases) of Granton Waterfront, Edinburgh	The City of Edinburgh Council	Cruden Homes Ltd	£126,542,550
Growth Gateway	Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office	Boston Consulting Group UK LLP	£108,900,000
CPH083 Provision of Adult Integrated Drug and Alcohol Treatment and Recovery Service	Derbyshire County Council	Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust	£59,737,381
Haringey Partnering Contracts Lot 3 EAST (north)	London Borough of Haringey	Mulalley and Company Limited	£58,928,295
MBTP Cyber Security Services	Home Office	Accenture UK Limited	£58,500,000
Haringey Partnering Contracts Lot 1 WEST	London Borough of Haringey	EQUANS regeneration Limited	£51,677,266
Managed Services for Temporary Agency Resources (MSTAR 4) via ESPO framework	London Borough of Hounslow	Adecco UK Limited	£40,000,000
Transformation Programme	London Borough of Merton	Channel 3 Consulting	£40,000,000
37380000	Ministry of Defence	BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS LIMITED	£37,380,000

Contracts published in September 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 September 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.