Free Guide: Thurrock Spending & Supplier Profile
A free spending & supplier guide for Thurrock Council · Unitary authority · East of England
Data covering 2011 to 2026
Recorded Spend
£10.3bn
Transactions
612,509
Suppliers
6,031
Key Takeaways
- £10.3 billion in recorded spend across 612,509 transactions from 2011 to 2026
- 6,031 identified suppliers with an unconcentrated market, HHI of 387
- 121 tenders worth £2.5 billion in the pipeline, split evenly between open and direct awards
£10.3 billion from a unitary with 175,000 people?
That number jumps out. Thurrock is a compact unitary authority covering 63.3 square miles in Essex, but our data shows £10.3 billion in recorded spend across 612,509 transactions stretching from 2011 to 2026. For a council serving around 175,500 residents, that is a very large volume of purchasing activity. The data is drawn from 257 source files collected from Thurrock's own website and Find a Tender, with the latest collection dated January 2023. On the contracts side, we've tracked 58 published contracts worth a combined £4.5 million, which looks modest against the transaction spend. But the tender pipeline tells a different story: 121 tenders with a combined value of £2.5 billion. That gap between contract and tender values suggests much of Thurrock's bigger procurement runs through formal tender processes rather than smaller published contracts. If you're sizing up this council, the transaction volumes alone make it worth a closer look.
Where does the money actually go?
Spend here is spread wide. We've matched 9,920 suppliers to company records, and the concentration numbers back that up. An HHI of 387 is low, meaning no single supplier dominates the picture. The top five identified suppliers account for 39.9% of matched spend, and the top ten for 50.5%. London Borough of Jam Limited leads with £543 million, followed by Coventry Building Supplies at £505 million. Wholesale and retail trade is the largest sector by spend at 18.2%, with 674 suppliers sharing £907 million. Manufacturing follows at 12.1%, then health and social work at 11.5%. Construction and professional services each sit around 10%. Thurrock is also a full member of the South East Consortium, which may shape how some procurement is routed. What's worth noting is the breadth: 22 sectors appear in the data, and no single sector pulls away dramatically from the rest. Competition looks genuinely spread across multiple categories.
How open is the front door?
Based on the contracts we hold formal procurement data for, the sample is small: just 4 contracts with method data attached. Of those, two went through open tender and two were direct awards. The median contract value sits at £221,200, so these are mid-range opportunities rather than mega-deals. With only 4 contracts to work from, it is hard to draw firm conclusions about Thurrock's procurement preferences. But the tender pipeline paints a fuller picture. Those 121 tenders, worth a combined £2.5 billion, suggest the council is active in advertising opportunities formally. Two of the 4 contracts fell above the procurement threshold, two below, so there's a mix of regulated and lower-value work coming through. For a council this size running this much spend, the relatively thin contract publication record is something to keep in mind when assessing how visible opportunities will be before they close.
| # | Supplier | Spend |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LONDON BOROUGH OF JAM LIMITED | £542,898,433 |
| 2 | COVENTRY BUILDING SUPPLIES LIMITED | £505,100,019 |
| 3 | ESSEX COUNTY CARS LTD | £321,685,288 |
| 4 | GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY HOLDINGS LIMITED | £263,935,746 |
| 5 | MEARS LIMITED | £123,131,122 |
| 6 | WATES CONSTRUCTION LIMITED | £116,633,144 |
| 7 | MANCHESTER CITY COLLEGE LIMITED | £105,113,939 |
| 8 | BASILDON DISTRICT COUNCIL | £93,172,870 |
| 9 | CITY OF BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY COLLEGE | £90,705,932 |
| 10 | KIER INFRASTRUCTURE AND OVERSEAS LIMITED | £88,436,478 |
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.
