Incumbent check
How to tell if there is an incumbent you cannot beat on a UK tender: transport
18 UK transport contracts held by one supplier end April to October 2027. How to tell if the incumbent can be beaten, and what its award record shows.
Skim · Built on Skim's live UK procurement database13 October 20269 min read
Skim award records for UK buyers, CPV division 60 (transport services) matched on each notice's main code, awards with a published value of £1,000,000 or more, held by a single supplier, with a recorded contract end date between 13 April and 13 October 2027. Snapshot 13 October 2026. The window was read to exhaustion: 21 records, after Skim had already collapsed five notices that were copies of another notice of the same award. Three records are not UK transport services despite their classification (commercial waste collection, plant hire with an operator, and a safety boat in Cyprus), leaving 18 contracts. 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. The previous term of each contract was searched for by its title words at the same buyer, across every portal Skim holds. A previous term that does not appear means it was not published in a form the search could find, not that there was none. Contract end dates are publisher-attested or derived from start date plus duration, and are missing on many sources, so every count is a floor rather than a census. No contract values are quoted: for several of these notices Skim's records publish two different values for the same award.
The short answer
You can rarely tell from a tender pack alone whether an incumbent is unbeatable, but the award record is the best evidence there is: find who won the contract the last time it was let, and the time before. An incumbent that has won the same service from the same buyer at consecutive competitions has beaten that buyer's evaluation model at least twice, and is the one to treat as hard to move. An earlier award to a different supplier is evidence that the buyer has changed supplier before, though not always at the last competition.
4 of 18
Skim award records, CPV 60, snapshot 13 October 2026
Only one of those four, Loganair's air services for Transport Scotland, shows the same supplier winning back-to-back terms. In the other three an earlier award went to a different supplier, but the record has a gap or a change of scope between that award and today's, so none of them proves a switch at the last competition. For the remaining 14 contracts the record shows only the current award. Four traced contracts are a handful of cases, not a rate, and they say nothing about transport incumbents in general. What they show is how the test works, and how often you will need a second route to the answer.
How to check an incumbent for free
Every step below uses public sources, and none needs a subscription.
Find the current award, then the one before it. Search the buyer's name with the words in the contract's title ("coach and driver hire", "home to school transport", the route number) and filter to awarded notices. Higher-value awards, and every notice under the Procurement Act 2023, are on Find a Tender; lower-value and older awards in England are on Contracts Finder; Scottish buyers publish on Public Contracts Scotland. Older notices often carry a different title, so search two or three variants and go back at least two terms.
Read how the last competition was decided. The tender notice and documents set out the award criteria and their weightings. Government guidance on assessing competitive tenders explains how buyers assess tenders against the award criteria they publish. A model weighted towards experience of this exact service or this buyer favours the holder; one weighted towards price or a changed specification gives a challenger more room.
Look for signs the buyer is preparing to compete it. Requests for information, preliminary market engagement and planning notices usually come months before a tender. Larger buyers must also publish a pipeline notice for opportunities over £2 million expected in the next 18 months. A buyer that is asking the market questions is still deciding what to buy.
Check whether it will be competed at all. Under the Procurement Act 2023 a buyer that intends to award a contract directly, without competition, must first publish a transparency notice, as the government guidance on direct award sets out. An incumbent that is awarded the next term directly cannot be beaten by a bid, only by a challenge.
The method is sound. The next section shows how often the first step runs out of record.
Eighteen transport contracts and their previous terms
Each contract below is a single award held by one named supplier, with a published value of £1 million or more and a recorded end date inside the window. The last column is what a search of the same buyer for the same service found.
| Buyer | Contract | Incumbent | Ends | Previous term in the record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milton Keynes City Council | Bus route 33/X33 | Arriva The Shires | 30 Apr 2027 | Not found |
| Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust | Taxi and non-emergency transport | 500 Cars | 11 May 2027 | 2017 competition, no winner recorded |
| Ministry of Defence | Transport of fuels within the UK | Hoyer Gas & Petroleum Logistics | 31 May 2027 | Wincanton Group, 2015; gap to 2022 |
| Transport for London | Bus route 67 | Arriva London North | 4 Jun 2027 | Not found |
| St Helens College | Home to college transport passes | Merseytravel | 20 Jul 2027 | Arriva Merseyside and Arriva North West, bus passes only, 2025 |
| Gloucestershire County Council | Gloucester and Cirencester to Tetbury bus | Stagecoach West | 31 Jul 2027 | Not found |
| North Somerset Council | Supported bus services, batch 2, lot 3 | First West of England | 28 Aug 2027 | Not found |
| Metropolitan Police Service | Coach and driver hire | CMAC Group UK | 31 Aug 2027 | The Kings Ferry, 2017; 2020 outcome not recorded |
| City of York Council | Home to school transport | Streamline Taxis | 31 Aug 2027 | Not found; successor planning notice published 8 Oct 2026 |
| Transport for London | Bus route 398 | London Sovereign | 3 Sep 2027 | Not found |
| Nottingham University Hospital | Taxi transportation | D.G. Private Hire | 11 Sep 2027 | Not found |
| Transport for London | Bus route 160/660 | Stagecoach Selkent | 17 Sep 2027 | Not found |
| Derbyshire County Council | Local bus, six routes (PTU 251) | Stagecoach Yorkshire | 26 Sep 2027 | Not found |
| Transport Scotland | Air services, Glasgow to Campbeltown, Tiree and Barra | Loganair | 26 Sep 2027 | Loganair, 2019; held at the next competition |
| Transport for London | Bus route 290 | London United | 1 Oct 2027 | Not found |
| Transport for London | Bus route 201 | Abellio London | 1 Oct 2027 | Not found |
| Transport for London | Bus route 180 | Stagecoach Selkent | 1 Oct 2027 | Not found |
| Transport for London | Bus route 175 | Arriva London North | 8 Oct 2027 | Not found |
Seven of the 18 are London bus routes, and for none of them does the record hold an earlier award of the same route. Where an earlier term is not in the national record, the holder before the current one has to come from the buyer itself.
One held twice, and three with a different earlier winner
Transport Scotland, air services from Glasgow to Campbeltown, Tiree and Barra. Loganair won the 2019 competition and the 2023 competition, and the 2019 contract ran until September 2023, so these are consecutive terms. The 2023 tender was published on 24 April, four and a half months before the 2019 contract ended. In 2023 the buyer also let a contract to Ernst & Young for cost estimation on the route's public service obligation. Two consecutive wins on the same service from the same buyer is the clearest signal in this data of an incumbent that will be hard to move. The current contract ends on 26 September 2027.
Ministry of Defence, transport of fuels within the UK. An earlier contract, reference DFFS/5068, from a competition that closed in 2015, was awarded to Wincanton Group. The current one went to Hoyer Gas & Petroleum Logistics in December 2022. The record holds no award between the two, so it does not show whether Wincanton held the contract right up to 2022. The current competition was signalled well ahead: requests for information were published in February 2018 and again in January 2022, and the invitation to tender followed in August 2022. The current contract ends on 31 May 2027. If the pattern holds, a request for information is the first thing to watch for.
Metropolitan Police Service, coach and driver hire. The Kings Ferry won the 2017 competition. A 2020 competition appears in the record with no award recorded, so who held the contract between 2020 and 2025 is not shown, and CMAC may already have been the holder. A planning notice was published in October 2023, the tender in February 2025, and CMAC Group UK won the contract that ends on 31 August 2027.
St Helens College, home to college passes. The 2025 award, for bus passes, named Arriva Merseyside and Arriva North West. The 2026 award, for public transport passes, went to Merseytravel. The two awards cover different scopes, so this is a new specification with a new supplier rather than a like-for-like switch. That is still a pattern worth looking for: a specification that has moved since the last award can weaken whatever advantage the holder had.
11 months
Skim award records, snapshot 13 October 2026
What this data cannot tell you
The 18 is complete for one query and nothing wider: UK buyers, CPV division 60 matched on the notice's main code, single-supplier awards with a published value of £1 million or more, ending between 13 April and 13 October 2027, frameworks excluded. Contracts with no published value, or published under another code, are not in it.
A previous term marked not found means a search of the same buyer and the same title words did not find it, not that the contract was new. Titles change between competitions, and older notices were not always published nationally.
Four traced terms cannot carry a rate, and nothing here says transport incumbents usually lose. The record also does not show performance, which decides many recompetes, the scores at the last competition, which go only to the bidders, or subcontractors delivering under the incumbent's name.
FAQ
How do I tell if there is an incumbent I cannot beat on a UK tender?
Find who won the same contract at the last two competitions. An incumbent that won both has beaten the buyer's evaluation model twice; one that took the contract from another supplier last time shows the buyer does change. Then read the award criteria and check whether the specification has changed since the last award.
Where do I find the previous award of a UK public contract?
Search the buyer and the contract's title words on Find a Tender, Contracts Finder and, for Scottish buyers, Public Contracts Scotland. Try several title variants, because older notices often describe the same service differently.
What if the previous award is not published?
Ask the buyer, during market engagement or through a clarification question once the tender is live. For 14 of the 18 transport contracts in this report the public record shows only the current award.
Can an incumbent be awarded the next contract without a competition?
Yes, in limited circumstances. Under the Procurement Act 2023 a buyer must publish a transparency notice before a direct award, so watch for one as the current contract nears its end.
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