Free Guide: Peterborough Spending & Supplier Profile
A free spending & supplier guide for Peterborough City Council · Unitary authority · East of England
Data covering 2011 to 2026
Recorded Spend
£103.6m
Transactions
333,370
Suppliers
3,674
Key Takeaways
- £103.6 million in recorded spend across 333,370 transactions since 2011
- 3,674 identified suppliers with an unconcentrated market at HHI 330
- 126 tenders tracked worth £1.9 billion, dwarfing current contract values
How big a buyer is Peterborough?
Peterborough is a unitary authority covering 132.4 square miles in the East of England, with a population just over 202,000. It sits within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, which matters for understanding where some procurement decisions get made. Our dataset covers £103.6 million in recorded spend across 333,370 transactions, drawn from 119 source files and spanning 2011 to 2026. That is a solid volume of transactional data for a council this size. We have also tracked 73 published contracts worth a combined £39.5 million, and 126 tenders valued at £1.9 billion. That tender figure is striking. It suggests a pipeline of large-scale opportunities, likely including infrastructure and PFI-related projects, that far outstrips the contract values captured so far. For a mid-sized unitary, Peterborough punches above its weight in terms of published procurement activity.
Serco leads, but nobody dominates
Across the 3,804 suppliers we have matched to company records, Serco Limited sits at the top with £143.3 million in recorded spend. Cambridgeshire County Homes follows at £85.3 million, then Skanska at £76.6 million. Construction is the biggest sector at 20% of matched spend, followed by health and social work at 16.2% and administrative services at 15.7%. Professional and technical services run close behind at 15.5%. Four sectors each commanding 15-20% of spend is unusual. It means no single category overwhelms the budget. The concentration numbers back this up. An HHI of 330 is low, and the top five suppliers account for 35.1% of recorded spend. Even the top ten only reach 48.4%. If you are looking at this council, the supplier base looks genuinely broad. Waste management, through Viridor Peterborough, takes 7.7% of spend on its own, which is worth noting as a dedicated local contract.
Only 9 contracts on file, so what is going on?
Here is the puzzle. Despite 333,370 transactions and 126 published tenders, we only hold 9 formal contracts for Peterborough. Of those, 4 were direct awards, 2 went through open tender, and 3 have no recorded method. The median contract value sits at £155,250, which suggests the contracts we do have skew toward smaller procurements. With 5 above-threshold and 4 below-threshold contracts, there is a fairly even split. But the real story is in the gap between tender activity and contract records. That £1.9 billion tender pipeline, sourced from Find a Tender and Procontract, points to large procurements flowing through this council. The contract data just has not caught up yet. For bid managers scanning this council, the tender feed from procontract.due-north.com and Find a Tender is where the live action is. The direct award rate across what we hold looks high at 4 out of 9, though that sample is small.
| # | Supplier | Spend |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | SERCO LIMITED | £143,250,919 |
| 2 | CAMBRIDGESHIRE COUNTY HOMES LIMITED | £85,320,167 |
| 3 | SKANSKA CONSTRUCTION UK LIMITED | £76,610,842 |
| 4 | VIRIDOR PETERBOROUGH LIMITED | £76,559,914 |
| 5 | ENTERPRISE MANAGED SERVICES LIMITED | £74,707,720 |
| 6 | IIC BY EDUCATION (PETERBOROUGH SCHOOLS) LIMITED | £73,106,369 |
| 7 | MEDEQUIP ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY LIMITED | £37,752,156 |
| 8 | RINGWAY INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES LIMITED | £28,642,957 |
| 9 | HULL CULTURE AND LEISURE LIMITED | £18,532,214 |
| 10 | WATES CONSTRUCTION LIMITED | £14,922,081 |
About Us
CouncilLedger brings together spending records, contract awards, and tender notices from over 400 UK local authorities into one procurement intelligence platform. Our data covers 16 years of transactions, collected directly from council transparency publications and government procurement platforms. Search suppliers, track spending trends, discover tender opportunities, and monitor the contracts that matter to your business.
