UK Procurement Market Report · 31 August 2026 to 6 September 2026
UK public procurement: the week to 6 September 2026
Find a Tender notices from 31 Aug to 6 Sep: 1,764 releases, 1,025 awards, 48.9% below threshold and 78.2% SME supplier places, with coverage stated.
Counted from 1,764 notices published on Find a Tender between 31 August 2026 and 6 September 2026. Compiled 7 September 2026 by the eSourcing Data team.
1,764
Notices published
31 August 2026 to 6 September 2026, every notice type
1,025
Award notices
58.1% of the 1,764 classified notices
327
Tender notices
18.5% of the 1,764 classified notices
48.9%
Below threshold
720 of the 1,473 notices that named a procedure
28.2%
Carried a contract value
only 497 of 1,764 notices published a value
78.2%
SME share of flagged suppliers
4,308 of 5,508 suppliers that stated a size
The week in short
- 1,764 procurement notices were published on Find a Tender in the seven days to 6 September 2026.
- That breaks down as 1,025 award notices, 327 tender notices, 168 planning notices, 215 updates and 29 cancellations.
- Below threshold notices accounted for 48.9% of the 1,473 notices that stated a procurement procedure.
- 78.2% of the 5,508 supplier parties with a stated business size on award notices were logged as SMEs.
- Business services: law, marketing, consulting and recruitment was the most common subject area, on 15.7% of the 657 notices carrying a CPV code.
- A value in pounds was published on 28.2% of notices, with a median of £1,193,400 across those 497 records.
What this week's data can and cannot tell you
UK notices are not uniformly complete, so before any finding it is worth knowing how much of the data carries each field. Every percentage in this report is calculated from the notices that actually published the field in question, never from the full set. The bars below are those denominators.
Share of the 1,764 notices that published an amount. Every value figure below is calculated from those notices only.
Share of notices that stated whether the requirement is goods, services or works.
Share of notices that named the procurement procedure used. Both the procedure split and the below threshold share are calculated from those 1,473 notices.
Share of the supplier records on award notices that stated a business size. The SME figure is calculated from those records only.
This report counts notices published on Find a Tender in the period shown. It is a measure of published procurement activity, not a measure of all UK public spending. Notices can be updated or withdrawn after publication, and organisations that publish elsewhere are not included.
How buyers ran the process
Procurement procedure, as stated on the notice. This covers the 1,473 notices that named one, 83.5% of the 1,764 published in this period. The rest are not counted here rather than assumed.
Procedures used
Counts are notices. Base: the 1,473 notices that stated a procedure. Source: Find a Tender.
Below threshold activity
720 notices in this period were below threshold. That is 48.9% of the 1,473 notices that named a procedure, not of all 1,764 notices published, because a notice that does not name a procedure cannot be classified either way. This is where most smaller suppliers find work, and the split below shows how open that competition was.
Below threshold notices by route
- Open competition23232.2%
- Without competition22331%
- Limited competition18325.4%
- Unknown557.6%
- Award under framework273.8%
Counts are notices. Base: the 720 below threshold notices in this period. Source: Find a Tender.
What kind of notices these were
Every release is tagged with its notice type. Updates and cancellations are counted separately so they cannot inflate the count of live opportunities.
Notice types published
- Award notices1,02558.1%
- Tender notices32718.5%
- Updates21512.2%
- Planning notices1689.5%
- Cancellations291.6%
Counts are notices. Base: all 1,764 classified notices in this period. Source: Find a Tender.
The busiest sectors
Grouped by the CPV code published on the notice. Shares are of the notices that carried a CPV classification, not of all notices. CPV is a description of what is being bought, not a measure of its value.
Top sectors by notice count
Counts are notices. Base: the notices carrying a CPV classification. Source: Find a Tender.
Where the work is
Taken from the delivery region published on the notice. A notice can name more than one region and many name none, so shares are of the notices that stated a region.
Notices by delivery region
Counts are notices. Base: the notices stating a delivery region. Source: Find a Tender.
Who published the most
Ranked by number of notices published in the period, not by value. A buyer that splits a programme across many lots will appear high here without necessarily spending more than a buyer with one large notice.
Most active buyers by notice count
Counts are notices. Base: the notices naming a buyer, which is most but not all of them. Source: Find a Tender.
Published contract values
497
notices published a value
28.2% of notices in this period
£1,193,400
median published value
the midpoint of those notices
£23.65bn
sum of published values
£23,647,583,332
The sum above is the total of the values that were actually published. It is not the amount the UK public sector spent or committed in this period, and we do not scale it up to estimate one. In this period 71.8% of notices carried no value at all, published values can be estimates or maximums rather than contract prices, and a framework ceiling can dwarf what is ever called off it.
Values are published on a minority of notices. These figures cover the 497 of 1,764 releases (28.2%) that carried a value in pounds sterling. The median is the reliable measure here: the sum is heavily concentrated, with the five largest notices accounting for 28% of it and the single largest at £1,930,487,760. Large notices often state the whole life value of a framework or dynamic market rather than spending in this period, so the total is not a measure of UK public spending and should not be read as one.
Small business share
78.2%
of flagged suppliers were SMEs
4,308
suppliers flagged as SMEs
1,200
suppliers flagged as large
This is the share of the supplier records that stated a business size, 5,508 of them in this period, and 99.9% of the supplier records published carried that flag. It counts supplier places on awards, not contract value, so it is not the share of spending won by small businesses and it is not a national SME spend figure.
Counted from supplier parties named on award notices. 5,508 of 5,512 supplier parties carried a stated business size, so the percentage is calculated from those 5,508 records only and not from every award.
The week in numbers
Find a Tender carried 1,764 releases between 31 August 2026 and 6 September 2026. Of those, 1,025 were award notices, 327 were tender notices, 168 were planning notices, 215 were updates to existing notices and 29 were cancellations. Each release is counted once, under the most specific type it carries, so an award that also carries a contract tag is counted as a single award.
These are published notices, not contracts and not spending. A notice appears when a buyer chooses to publish, so the figures describe publishing behaviour on Find a Tender in the period, which is a good proxy for market activity but not the whole of UK public procurement.
Volume was down 30.4% on the same length of window covering 3 August 2026 to 9 August 2026, when 2,535 releases were published. That is a like for like comparison of two equal windows on the same source, nothing more.
How buyers are choosing procedures
1,473 releases, 83.5% of the total, stated a procurement procedure. Among those, open procedure was the most used at 24.7%, ahead of below threshold open competition at 15.8%. Percentages in this section are calculated from those 1,473 records only.
The Procurement Act 2023 replaced the old route map with a smaller set of choices: open procedure, competitive flexible procedure and direct award. In this period the open procedure sat at 24.7%, the competitive flexible procedure at 9.4% and direct award at 6.1%. The flexible procedure is in steady use, though the open procedure still does most of the work.
Direct award at 6.1% is a small part of the picture in this period, which is what a competitive market should look like on the published record.
The below threshold picture
Below threshold work made up a large minority of the period. 720 of the 1,473 notices that stated a procedure were below threshold, 48.9% of them.
Within the below threshold group the split was open competition on 232 notices (32.2%), without competition on 223 notices (31%), limited competition on 183 notices (25.4%), unknown on 55 notices (7.6%), award under framework on 27 notices (3.8%). Those percentages are shares of the 720 below threshold notices, not of the whole period.
More than half of below threshold notices, 56.4%, went out through limited or no competition. For suppliers that is the part of the market you cannot win by waiting for a tender to appear, because the buyer has already chosen who to ask.
SME participation
SMEs took 78.2% of the supplier places on award notices where a business size was stated. On this measure small and medium suppliers were the majority of named winners in the period.
Counted from supplier parties named on award notices. 5,508 of 5,512 supplier parties carried a stated business size, so the percentage is calculated from those 5,508 records only and not from every award. Business size is a self declared field, and it was completed on 99.9% of the supplier parties named on award notices in this period, so treat the share as the best available signal rather than a complete count of the market.
For a smaller supplier the practical read is that the published record does not support the idea that only large firms win. The constraint is usually visibility and bid capacity, not eligibility.
Sectors, regions and the busiest buyers
657 releases carried at least one CPV code, 37.2% of the week. Grouped to CPV division, the busiest subject areas were Business services: law, marketing, consulting and recruitment (15.7%), Health and social work services (15.5%), Construction work (13.7%), Architecture, engineering and inspection services (11.9%), Repair and maintenance services (11.6%). A notice can carry more than one division, so it is counted once in each division it touches and the shares do not add to 100%.
509 releases carried a delivery region, 28.9% of the week. On that base the busiest regions were East Midlands (17.9%), West Midlands (17.9%), South East (17.9%), London (17.7%), North West (16.5%). Region is taken from the delivery address on the notice, so national frameworks and centrally run contracts are under represented here.
The most active publishers by notice count were West Northamptonshire Council (47), Surrey County Council (44), Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board (24), Hampshire County Council (24), NHS England (22). Notice count is a measure of publishing activity, not of contract size, and a single procurement can produce several notices as it moves from planning to tender to award.
What it means for buyers and suppliers
For buyers, the useful question is whether your own publishing looks like the market around you. If most of your peers are running below threshold competitions and you are not, that is worth understanding, because procedure choice sets how many suppliers can realistically respond. Notices that carry a value and a category are also easier for suppliers to act on: across the market in this period a value in pounds appeared on 28.2% of notices and a main category on 45.7%.
For suppliers, the practical steps are narrow and repeatable. Track the divisions that match what you actually sell, starting with business services: law, marketing, consulting and recruitment, watch the buyers publishing most often in your region, and read award notices as market intelligence rather than as bad news. An award notice tells you who won, often how much, and when the contract is likely to come round again.
Everything above is drawn from notices published on Find a Tender between 31 August 2026 and 6 September 2026. It is a picture of what buyers chose to publish in that window. It is not a measure of all UK public spending, and no figure here has been extrapolated beyond the records that carry the field.
Method, source and licence
- Source: Find a Tender, the UK central notice service, read through its open OCDS API. Period covered: 31 August 2026 to 6 September 2026. Notices counted: 1,764. find-tender.service.gov.uk
- Every OCDS release updated between 2026-08-31 and 2026-09-06 was read from the Find a Tender API and counted once. Percentages are calculated from the records that carry the field in question, and each denominator is stated. Values cover only the notices that published one. Nothing is extrapolated, and this report describes published notices rather than all UK public spending.
- Percentages are calculated from the records that carry the field being measured, and each chart states that base. Fields are missing often enough that this matters.
- This report counts notices published on Find a Tender in the period shown. It is a measure of published procurement activity, not a measure of all UK public spending. Notices can be updated or withdrawn after publication, and organisations that publish elsewhere are not included.
- Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Read the licence
- This report is general information, not legal or commercial advice. Nothing in it implies endorsement of eSourcing Data by any government body.
Turn the market into a pipeline
eSourcing Data runs compliant notices, evaluation, supplier management and audit trails out of the box, for buyers who publish this data and the teams who respond to it. If you want a figure in this report cut by sector, region or buyer, ask us.