Recompete radar
How to track when UK government contracts are up for renewal: health and social care
107 UK health and social care contracts of £5m or more end between April and October 2027. How to track a renewal for free, and the incumbents to watch.
Skim · Built on Skim's live UK procurement database5 October 20269 min read
Skim award records for UK buyers, CPV division 85 (health and social work services), awards of £5,000,000 or more with a recorded contract end date between 5 April and 5 October 2027. Snapshot 5 October 2026. The window was read to exhaustion: 131 records over three pages, with no further results. Twenty-one of those records are a second notice of an award already counted and three are not health or social care awards, leaving 107 distinct awards. Framework agreements, dynamic purchasing systems and likely frameworks are excluded, because they publish a ceiling shared by every supplier on the panel rather than a contract value. Contract end dates are publisher-attested or derived from start date plus duration, and are missing on many sources, so every count here is a floor for the sector rather than a census. Values are shown as published on the award notice; the sources behind most of these rows publish no framework flag, so a value is indicative and is never summed.
The short answer
To track when a UK government contract is up for renewal, find its award notice on Contracts Finder or Find a Tender, note the end date and any extension options, then watch the buyer's pipeline notices from about 18 months before that date. Done for one sector, that routine turns up a lot: in UK health and social care alone, Skim's award data holds 107 distinct contracts of £5m or more due to end between 5 April and 5 October 2027.
107
Skim award records, CPV 85, snapshot 5 October 2026
That is six to twelve months out, which is the window that matters. A buyer that wants a new contract in place when the old one ends usually starts the procurement several months earlier, so most of these will be specified, engaged on and in many cases advertised between now and next summer. A bidder who first meets them on a tender portal meets them after the specification is written.
How to track a renewal for free
Every step below uses public sources, and none needs a subscription.
Start from the award, not the tender. An award notice names the winning supplier, the value and usually a start date and duration. Lower-value and legacy awards in England sit on Contracts Finder; higher-value awards, and everything procured under the Procurement Act 2023, sit on Find a Tender. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish on their own portals as well.
Work out the real end date. Read the duration and the extension options together. The initial term gives the earliest scheduled end, and each option only a possible later one: a three-year contract with a two-year option can end after three years or after five, and the buyer decides. Track the earlier date, because if the option is not taken that is when a replacement has to be in place. A buyer can also vary a contract or end it before its scheduled date, so check the award's later change and termination notices on Find a Tender as well. Where the notice gives only a start date and a term, the end date is an estimate, and it should be treated as one.
Watch the buyer's pipeline. Under the Procurement Act 2023, a contracting authority expecting to spend more than £100m in a financial year must publish a pipeline notice (UK1) for each opportunity over £2m it expects in the next 18 months. Many central departments also publish their own commercial pipelines on GOV.UK, and the Government Commercial Agency lists its upcoming agreements. A pipeline entry that matches a contract you are tracking is the strongest early signal there is.
Check both portals before you trust a date. The same award is often published twice, once on each portal, and the two notices do not always agree. In this window, 21 of 131 records were a second notice of an award already counted, and 13 of those pairs gave end dates more than a day apart. The widest gap was five months: a Ministry of Defence medical assessment contract appears with one end date of 30 April 2027 and another of 30 September 2027.
13 of 21
Skim award records, CPV 85, snapshot 5 October 2026
The method is sound and it does not scale. Repeating it for every buyer in a sector, every month, is the work a recompete tracker exists to do, and it is what Skim's data does in the tables below.
Thirteen named contracts reaching end of term
Each contract below is a single award held by one named incumbent, with a published value and a recorded end date inside the window. Shared awards, where several providers hold one contract between them, are left out of this table because a single figure cannot be attributed to any one of them.
| Buyer | Contract | Incumbent | Ends | Value as published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wakefield Council | 0-19 children's public health services | Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust | 24 Apr 2027 | £80,000,000 |
| Suffolk County Council | Digital care partnership | Alcove | 31 May 2027 | £15,272,319 |
| NHS Shared Business Services | Renal dialysis managed service (TRENDS) | Fresenius Medical Care Renal Services | 30 Jun 2027 | £43,414,912 |
| Attain, for North East Essex | Talking therapies (IAPT) service | Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust | 30 Jun 2027 | £53,424,777 |
| NHS South, Central and West CSU | Integrated healthcare at HMP YOI Winchester | Care UK | 30 Jun 2027 | £40,866,539 |
| Department for Work and Pensions | Occupational health and employee assistance | People Asset Management | 30 Jun 2027 | £18,600,000 |
| Hertfordshire County Council | Integrated sexual health services | Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust | 30 Jul 2027 | £54,200,000 |
| Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council | Integrated sexual health service | Virgin Care Services | 31 Jul 2027 | £22,404,120 |
| Reading Borough Council | Dementia care block contracts | Florence Care Reading | 23 Aug 2027 | £37,717,710 |
| Hampshire County Council | Hampshire wellbeing services | Hampshire Mind | 31 Aug 2027 | £24,716,861 |
| Thurrock Council | 0-19 healthy child programme | North East London NHS Foundation Trust | 31 Aug 2027 | £21,934,288 |
| Kirklees Council | Integrated substance misuse service | Change Grow Live | 30 Sep 2027 | £53,924,705 |
| NHS Shared Business Services, for North and Mid Mersey | GP out of hours integrated urgent care | Primary Care 24 | 30 Sep 2027 | £82,845,310 |
Two things stand out. Four of the thirteen incumbents are NHS trusts rather than private or voluntary sector providers, all on public health or therapy services. A recompete of that kind can draw bids from other trusts as well as from companies, so the competitor set is wider than a supplier search suggests. And the end dates bunch on the last day of a month. Across all 107 awards, 60 end on a month end, with 31 July (18 awards) and 30 June (16) the busiest single days.
Thirteen community equipment contracts, seven held by one supplier
The clearest pattern in the window is in integrated community equipment services: the beds, hoists and daily-living aids a council and its NHS partners loan to people at home. Thirteen such contracts reach end of term in the window, and seven of them, for seven London boroughs, are held by Provide Care Solutions and end on 21 or 22 September 2027.
| Buyer | Incumbent | Ends |
|---|---|---|
| Buckinghamshire Council | NRS Healthcare | 19 Jun 2027 |
| Southampton City Council | Nottingham Rehab (NRS Healthcare) | 30 Jun 2027 |
| Somerset County Council | Medequip Assistive Technology | 31 Jul 2027 |
| London Borough of Ealing | Medequip Assistive Technology | 31 Jul 2027 |
| London Borough of Hillingdon | Medequip Assistive Technology | 31 Jul 2027 |
| Southwark Council | Provide Equipment Hub | 31 Jul 2027 |
| London Borough of Brent | Provide Care Solutions | 21 Sep 2027 |
| London Borough of Camden | Provide Care Solutions | 21 Sep 2027 |
| London Borough of Hackney | Provide Care Solutions | 21 Sep 2027 |
| London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham | Provide Care Solutions | 21 Sep 2027 |
| London Borough of Harrow | Provide Care Solutions | 21 Sep 2027 |
| London Borough of Islington | Provide Care Solutions | 21 Sep 2027 |
| London Borough of Haringey | Provide Care Solutions | 22 Sep 2027 |
The seven Provide Care Solutions contracts were all awarded in September 2025 and all end in the same two days, which is consistent with one joint arrangement let on behalf of several boroughs. If so, they are likely to be re-let together, and the decision will sit with whoever leads that arrangement rather than with each borough separately. That is worth confirming with the boroughs' commissioning teams before planning around it. The Islington and Hammersmith and Fulham contracts come from Provide Care Solutions' award record rather than the £5m census above: Islington's published value is under £5m and Hammersmith and Fulham's notice publishes none.
What this data cannot tell you
The 107 is complete for one query and nothing wider: UK buyers, CPV division 85, awards of £5m or more, ending between 5 April and 5 October 2027, frameworks excluded. Lower the value floor and the count rises steeply; widen the sector and it rises again. It is a count of awards, not a value, and no total in pounds is given because one cannot be given honestly from this data.
End dates are approximate and often missing. A buyer that publishes badly will look quiet here, so every count is a floor. Where an award was published twice with two different end dates, it is counted once at the earlier date, and the true date may be either.
Values are as published. The portals behind most of these awards do not flag frameworks, so a value can occasionally be a ceiling rather than a contract. Awards held jointly by several providers carry one figure across all of them, which is why they are counted but not tabulated.
An end date is not a re-tender date. A buyer may extend, may use an option nobody published, may bring the service in house, or may fold it into a wider contract. The date tells you when to start asking, not what the answer will be.
FAQ
How do I find out when a UK government contract ends?
Find the award notice on Contracts Finder or Find a Tender and read the contract start date, duration and extension options. Where the same award appears on both portals, compare them: in UK health and social care awards ending between April and October 2027, 13 of 21 double-published awards gave end dates more than a day apart.
How far ahead should I start tracking a recompete?
Twelve to eighteen months before the end date. Authorities spending over £100m a year must publish pipeline notices for opportunities over £2m expected in the next 18 months, and a buyer wanting continuity usually begins the replacement procurement six to twelve months before the old contract ends.
Who holds a contract now?
The award notice names the winning supplier. In health and social care the incumbent is often an NHS trust rather than a company: four of the thirteen single-incumbent contracts named in this report are held by NHS trusts.
Will a contract be re-tendered when it ends?
Not necessarily. It may be extended, varied, brought in house or folded into a larger contract. A published pipeline notice or a preliminary market engagement notice on Find a Tender is the best confirmation that a recompete is coming.
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