analysis
which buyers open contracts to small businesses
71.2% of UK public sector contracts are marked by the buyer as suitable for small and medium enterprises — 400,781 of 563,192 that say either way. Over the last 24 months it is 72.8%. The share varies enormously between buyers, and that variation is what this page is about.
The flag is the buyer's own, taken from the notice. Nothing here is inferred from contract size or from who eventually won — this is what each organisation says about the work it advertises.
So it is a measure of access to the competition, not of spend. A buyer can mark every notice suitable for SMEs and still award all of it to one large supplier, and nothing on this page would show that. It answers "could a small business have bid", which is the question that comes first.
Contracts where the buyer said nothing either way are excluded from both sides of every percentage, so these describe notices that were classified rather than the corpus as a whole.
buyers most open to SMEs
Organisations publishing at least 500 classified contracts, where the flag is not always the same answer. A smaller denominator produces percentages that swing on a handful of contracts, and a publisher whose flag never varies is defaulting the field rather than answering it — so a genuinely always-open or always-closed buyer cannot appear here either. That is the trade.
| buyer | SME-suitable | of | share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ofgem | 535 | 536 | 99.8% |
| Shropshire Healthcare Procurement Service | 1,072 | 1,076 | 99.6% |
| Department for International Development | 1,118 | 1,134 | 98.6% |
| University of Nottingham (The) | 503 | 514 | 97.9% |
| Espo | 630 | 646 | 97.5% |
| London Borough of Haringey | 1,683 | 1,735 | 97% |
| Met Office | 2,479 | 2,606 | 95.1% |
| Food Standards Agency | 554 | 586 | 94.5% |
| Centre for Process Innovation Limited | 685 | 727 | 94.2% |
| NHS Property Services Limited | 1,995 | 2,125 | 93.9% |
| Science Museum Group | 709 | 756 | 93.8% |
| FCDO Services | 5,252 | 5,642 | 93.1% |
| Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport | 725 | 781 | 92.8% |
| London Borough of Hillingdon | 1,163 | 1,256 | 92.6% |
| Staffordshire County Council | 1,443 | 1,567 | 92.1% |
| City of Doncaster Council | 953 | 1,043 | 91.4% |
| Forestry Commission | 517 | 566 | 91.3% |
| Stoke-on-Trent City Council | 552 | 610 | 90.5% |
| North Tyneside Council | 946 | 1,046 | 90.4% |
| The National Archives | 590 | 653 | 90.4% |
buyers least open to SMEs
A low share is not by itself a criticism. This measures how a body answers a question about its own notices, and cannot separate that from the nature of the work it buys — two organisations doing identical work can answer differently. It is a starting point for a question, not the answer to one.
| buyer | SME-suitable | of | share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birmingham Childrens Hospital | 24 | 559 | 4.3% |
| Radioactive Waste Management Limited | 60 | 1,204 | 5% |
| Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council | 316 | 3,852 | 8.2% |
| Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust | 55 | 629 | 8.7% |
| London Ambulance Service NHS Trust | 57 | 640 | 8.9% |
| British Business Bank | 71 | 793 | 9% |
| The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust | 253 | 1,837 | 13.8% |
| Hee | 116 | 792 | 14.6% |
| Highways Agency | 271 | 1,330 | 20.4% |
| Central Bedfordshire Council | 401 | 1,407 | 28.5% |
| Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) | 354 | 1,206 | 29.4% |
| London Borough of Enfield | 750 | 2,526 | 29.7% |
| The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office | 151 | 508 | 29.7% |
| Suffolk County Council | 1,696 | 5,544 | 30.6% |
| Sellafield Limited | 211 | 640 | 33% |
| Environment Agency | 671 | 1,949 | 34.4% |
| Health Education England | 680 | 1,845 | 36.9% |
| Homes & Communities Agency | 253 | 672 | 37.6% |
| Leeds City Council | 1,587 | 4,213 | 37.7% |
| Financial Conduct Authority | 300 | 775 | 38.7% |
by year
| year | classified | share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 10,206 | 50.8% | |
| 2016 | 44,401 | 62.1% | |
| 2017 | 37,143 | 70% | |
| 2018 | 42,150 | 70.5% | |
| 2019 | 45,652 | 70.2% | |
| 2020 | 41,799 | 73.5% | |
| 2021 | 57,743 | 74% | |
| 2022 | 62,043 | 74% | |
| 2023 | 69,167 | 72.2% | |
| 2024 | 67,043 | 72.7% | |
| 2025 | 50,320 | 70.3% | |
| 2026 | 35,304 | 76% |
by category
Every category with at least 1,000 classified contracts, most open first.
how this was counted
From the SME suitability flag published on each notice 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.
563,192 contracts carry the SME flag either way and are what the SME percentages are calculated from. The VCSE share is a separate question with a separate denominator — 550,327 contracts answer it — and the 24-month figure is measured over that window alone. Contracts that say nothing are excluded from both numerator and denominator rather than counted as a no, because an unanswered question is not a refusal.
This is not a spend measure and should not be quoted as one. It records how work was advertised, not who won it or what they were paid.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.