Source: https://tendernation.io/guides/single-bid-public-contracts-uk

Guide

# One in eight UK public contracts gets just one bid

We counted the bids reported on 16,945 openly advertised UK contract awards from October 2024 to October 2026. One in eight drew a single bid, and education, health and care, Northern Ireland and central government saw the least competition.

Updated 23 Oct 2026

One in eight openly advertised UK public contracts attracted just one bid. Across 16,945 contract awards published on Find a Tender between 19 October 2024 and 16 October 2026, 12.6% (2,143 contracts) reported a single bid, and 25.7% reported two or fewer. The typical contract drew 5 bids.

These are contracts any supplier could bid for: open, restricted and competitive procedures. We left out frameworks, dynamic purchasing systems, call-offs and direct awards, which have one bidder per award by design. When a contract like that gets one bid, the buyer has no competing price to compare, and the supplier who did bid faced no one.

## Where competition is thinnest

By sector (the notice's main CPV division), among sectors with at least 300 awards:

| Sector | Awards | Single bid | Typical bids |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education and training | 594 | 17.5% | 4 |
| Health and social care | 2,571 | 16.8% | 4 |
| IT services | 614 | 11.9% | 5 |
| Repair and maintenance | 824 | 11.8% | 4 |
| Financial and insurance services | 311 | 11.6% | 4 |
| Waste, cleaning and environmental services | 941 | 11.5% | 4 |
| Business services and consultancy | 1,314 | 11.0% | 5 |
| Construction work | 1,592 | 10.9% | 5 |
| Software and IT systems | 379 | 10.6% | 4 |
| Transport services | 2,682 | 8.5% | 12 |
| Architecture and engineering | 850 | 8.1% | 5 |
| Hotel, catering and retail | 324 | 8.0% | 4 |

Health and social care is one of the two largest categories, and one contract in six drew a single bid.

By type of buyer:

| Buyer type | Awards | Single bid | Typical bids |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central government | 2,254 | 17.4% | 3 |
| Public bodies (NHS trusts, universities, agencies) | 2,466 | 15.2% | 4 |
| Councils and other local government | 10,315 | 10.7% | 5 |
| Public undertakings | 438 | 10.5% | 4 |
| Housing associations | 870 | 3.9% | 6 |

By nation, using the regulations each notice was published under: contracts under Northern Ireland's rules drew a single bid 24.7% of the time (542 awards), about twice the rate elsewhere. Wales was 14.4% (623 awards), and the rest of the UK 12.2% (15,779).

## Buyers with the highest share

Buyers with at least 25 competitive awards and the highest share of single-bid contracts, as reported in their own award notices:

| Buyer | Awards | Single bid |
|---|---|---|
| Aneurin Bevan University Health Board | 30 | 76.7% |
| London Bus Services Limited (part of TfL) | 93 | 54.8% |
| Transport for London | 166 | 48.2% |
| Ministry of Defence | 201 | 45.3% |
| NHS Blood and Transplant | 29 | 41.4% |
| Belfast City Council | 62 | 40.3% |
| Scottish Government | 99 | 37.4% |
| University of Glasgow | 36 | 36.1% |
| Queen's University Belfast | 63 | 33.3% |
| Derry City and Strabane District Council | 130 | 32.3% |

A high share isn't proof of a problem. Bus routes, defence equipment, specialist laboratory kit and individual care placements often have few suppliers able to deliver. But it does show where a capable supplier faces little or no competition. If you're one of these buyers and think a figure is wrong, tell us at  and we'll check it against your notices.

## What it means for small businesses

On contracts where buyers reported it (3,956 awards), 60% of bids came from SMEs, and at least one SME bid on 79% of them. Thin competition is an opening: on a quarter of these contracts, a new bidder would have faced two rivals or fewer.

Before you bid, check how crowded your corner of the market is. The free [competition checker](https://tendernation.io/tools/competition-checker) shows the typical number of bids for tenders in your sector and value band, from the same award notices. Each buyer's page lists its open tenders and past awards, for example [Transport for London](https://tendernation.io/buyers/transport-for-london).

## Why this can be measured at all

None of this is possible without open data. UK buyers now report how many bids they received in their contract award notices, and Find a Tender publishes those notices as open data that anyone can download. That is what lets anyone, from journalists to buyers to small suppliers, see where competition is thin. It only works if the bid counts keep being collected and published, so this is a good reason to keep that data flowing.

## How we counted

- **Source:** contract award notices on Find a Tender, the UK's central notice service, published 19 October 2024 to 16 October 2026, read through its open data (OCDS) feed.
- **Rules in force:** the Procurement Act 2023 regime went live on 24 February 2025, so about five in six of these awards were published under it and the rest under the earlier regulations. The single-bid share was slightly lower under the new regime, about 12% against 14% before it.
- **Contracts counted:** UK awards from open, restricted, competitive flexible, competitive dialogue and competitive-with-negotiation procedures. Left out: anything flagged as a framework, and notices whose titles say framework, dynamic purchasing system (DPS), approved list or select list. Those appoint suppliers one award at a time, each showing one bid. We also left out direct awards and call-offs.
- **Bids:** the number of bids the buyer reported in the award notice. Notices without a bid count are left out, as are counts above 1,000, which are typing slips (some notices give a year, such as 2026, as the number of bids).
- **Buyers table:** we checked sample notices for each listed buyer. We dropped one council whose single-bid awards were mostly repeated orders to the same contractor under one arrangement, which act like call-offs.
- **Sectors** use the notice's main CPV code. "Typical bids" is the median.
- **Not included:** Public Contracts Scotland notices. Their single-bid rate is much higher (about half), and we are checking whether they count bids per lot differently before publishing them. Sell2Wales, and notices published only on Contracts Finder, are also not included.

The figures come from TenderNation's procurement database, built from the public notices. Journalists and researchers can ask for the underlying rows at .

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