Incumbent check
How to identify the incumbent supplier on a UK public sector contract: waste and cleaning
23 UK waste and cleaning contracts of £5m or more, each held by one supplier, end April to October 2027. How to identify the incumbent and check it.
Skim · Built on Skim's live UK procurement database6 October 202610 min read
Skim award records for UK buyers, CPV division 90 (sewage, refuse, cleaning and environmental services), awards of £5,000,000 or more with a recorded contract end date between 6 April and 6 October 2027. Snapshot 6 October 2026. The window was read to exhaustion: 52 records over two pages, with no further results. Twenty of those records are not waste or cleaning services despite their classification (highways, consultancy, care, maintenance and similar), one is titled as a framework, and one is a second notice of an award already counted, leaving 30 distinct waste and cleaning awards, 23 of them held by a single supplier. 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 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. Supplier records are split across spellings and registration numbers, so any count of a supplier's awards is a floor.
The short answer
To identify the incumbent supplier on a UK public sector contract, find the buyer's most recent award notice for that service on Contracts Finder or Find a Tender: the supplier it names is the incumbent, unless a later change, extension or termination notice says otherwise. That takes minutes. Knowing whether the record is right, and how hard the incumbent will be to move, takes longer, and in waste and cleaning the record is often wrong in small ways that matter.
23
Skim award records, CPV 90, snapshot 6 October 2026
Those 23 sit inside 30 distinct waste and cleaning awards in the window; the other seven are shared between two or more suppliers. Six to twelve months out is a good time to identify an incumbent. A buyer that wants a replacement in place when the old contract ends has to procure it first, and under the Procurement Act 2023 larger buyers must publish a pipeline notice for each opportunity over £2 million they expect in the next 18 months.
How to identify the incumbent for free
Every step below uses public sources, and none needs a subscription.
Find the last award notice. Search the buyer's name with the words a buyer would use for the service ("street cleansing", "residual waste", "cleaning services"), and filter to awarded notices. Lower-value and older awards in England sit on Contracts Finder; higher-value awards, and every notice under the Procurement Act 2023, sit on Find a Tender. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish buyers also publish on Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales and eTendersNI.
Find the second notice. The same award is often published on more than one portal, and the copies do not always agree on the end date or the value. Read every copy before you plan around a date.
Confirm the legal entity. Award notices carry the supplier's name as the buyer typed it. Check it against Companies House, because a group can hold contracts through several companies and a search on one spelling misses the rest.
Check what has happened since. Look for later change, extension and termination notices on the same procurement. A supplier named on a 2020 award may not be the supplier delivering in 2027.
Look for repeat awards. Search the buyer and the supplier's name together. An incumbent that has won from the same buyer more than once is a different proposition from one on its first term.
The method is sound. Repeated across every buyer in a sector, it is slow, and the next two sections show where it trips.
Sixteen named contracts and their incumbents
Each contract below is a single award held by one named supplier, with a published value and a recorded end date inside the window. Shared awards are left out of this table, because one published figure cannot be attributed to any one of the suppliers on them.
| Buyer | Contract | Incumbent | Ends | Value as published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Derry City and Strabane District Council | Treatment of biowaste | Natural World Products | 13 Apr 2027 | £16,059,000 |
| Westminster City Council | Waste treatment | Veolia ES (UK) | 15 Apr 2027 | £6,289,001 |
| London Borough of Sutton | Soft facilities management | Servest Group | 30 Apr 2027 | £7,500,000 |
| London Borough of Lewisham | Processing and sale of dry recyclables | Bywaters (Leyton) | 5 May 2027 | £8,900,000 |
| Lancashire County Council | Residual waste recovery and disposal, lot 3 | Lancashire Waste Recycling | 31 May 2027 | £13,125,000 |
| Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust | Domestic services | OCS Group UK | 31 May 2027 | £13,187,078 |
| North East Lincolnshire Council | Cleaning services | Kingdom Cleaning | 1 Jun 2027 | £25,000,000 |
| Essex County Council | Persistent organic pollutants waste treatment | Countrystyle Recycling | 9 Jun 2027 | £28,407,872 |
| London Borough of Merton | School cleaning and ancillary services | Julius Rutherfoord & Co | 18 Jun 2027 | £9,705,992 |
| Lincolnshire County Council | Dry recyclable materials | New Earth Solutions (West), trading as Mid UK Recycling | 30 Jun 2027 | £23,550,000 |
| Cardiff University | Cleaning, South Campus | Bidvest Noonan | 31 Jul 2027 | £9,906,427 |
| Dorset Council | Waste treatment and disposal | PandaGreen | 31 Aug 2027 | £91,000,000 |
| Brunel University London | Cleaning and general services | Hayward Services | 6 Sep 2027 | £13,800,000 |
| Kent County Council | Dry mixed recyclables processing | Veolia ES (UK) | 29 Sep 2027 | £5,000,000 |
| London Borough of Lambeth | Recycling, waste collection and street cleansing | Serco | 30 Sep 2027 | £118,700,000 |
| Central Bedfordshire Council, with Bedford Borough | Residual waste disposal | Veolia ES (UK) | 30 Sep 2027 | £38,105,865 |
Two of these were let for about a year. Essex's waste treatment contract and Hull's domestic services contract were both awarded in May 2026 and end in mid-2027. A short term can be an interim arrangement while the buyer prepares a longer contract, and if so the replacement is already being planned. The buyer's pipeline notices are where to confirm it.
Where the public record disagrees with itself
In this window the public record contradicts itself often enough to change a bid plan. Three named cases show the pattern.
One award, three notices, two end dates. Warrington Borough Council's contract to manage and operate its household waste recycling centres, held by Environmental Waste Controls at £11,000,000, is published three times. The Contracts Finder notice gives an end date of 30 September 2027. The notice published to the EU's TED gives 30 September 2031. The Find a Tender copy gives none. A bidder reading one portal would plan four years too early or four years too late.
4 years
Skim award records, Contracts Finder and TED notices, snapshot 6 October 2026
One award, two values. The Environment Agency's Hoads Wood waste clearance award to Acumen Waste Services appears twice, both dated 28 October 2024: once at £15,000,000 ending 15 July 2027, and once at £7,454,564 ending 28 July 2027. It is counted once here. Which figure is right is a question for the buyer.
One company, several names. Serco's Lambeth contract is published on both Contracts Finder and TED, which is easy to spot. Harder is that Serco's awards are published under at least three spellings of its name, "SERCO LIMITED", "Serco Ltd" and "Serco", and several of its council waste awards, Lambeth's among them, carry no company registration number at all. A search on one spelling finds part of the record, which is why the Companies House check comes before any conclusion about how many contracts a supplier holds.
Shared awards hide the incumbent in a different way. Cardiff University's 2024 cleaning and window cleaning award names three suppliers, Bidvest Noonan, OCS and Solo Service Group, under one published total. Which of them cleans which building is not in the notice.
How to tell whether an incumbent is entrenched
Naming the incumbent is the first half of the question. The second is whether it can be beaten, and the award record carries four signals worth reading before a bid/no-bid decision.
It has won the same buyer's work before. Hayward Services' record shows cleaning awards from Solent University in 2018 and 2019, two notices that may describe one award, and again in 2024, running to 2029. A supplier that has won the same buyer's work more than once has shown it can win on that buyer's evaluation model, and it holds knowledge of the site that a challenger has to price for.
It holds more than one award from the buyer. At Cardiff University, Bidvest Noonan is one of three suppliers on the 2024 cleaning award and the sole supplier on the South Campus contract let in July 2025. Both end in mid-2027, a month apart. A buyer may well re-let them together.
It is already on the buyer's newest framework. Kent County Council's waste management services framework, awarded in June 2025, lists Veolia and Countrystyle Recycling among its suppliers. Veolia's Kent dry mixed recyclables contract ends on 29 September 2027. The Procurement Act 2023 defines a framework as a contract that provides for the future award of contracts to the supplier or suppliers on it (government guidance on frameworks). So if Kent buys the replacement as a call-off under that framework, only the framework's suppliers can win it, and the same guidance notes that a call-off may be awarded with or without competition between them: it may go directly to one supplier, with no bid to prepare at all. Kent may instead run an open tender, and its pipeline and tender notices will show which route it takes.
It is on a short or rolling term. A one-year contract, or a run of extensions, can mean the buyer is still deciding what it wants next. If so, that is an opening for a challenger, and a reason to talk to the buyer before the specification is written.
What this data cannot tell you
The 23 is complete for one query and nothing wider: UK buyers, CPV division 90, awards of £5m or more, ending between 6 April and 6 October 2027, frameworks excluded, waste and cleaning services only. 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, so every count is a floor. Values are as published, and the portals behind most of these awards do not flag frameworks, so a value can occasionally be a ceiling rather than a contract.
Supplier records are split across spellings and registrations, so a supplier's count of awards from a buyer is a floor too. The data does not show subcontractors, who may deliver the work under a prime's name, or performance, which decides most recompetes and is not published.
FAQ
How do I find out who holds a UK public sector contract now?
Search the buyer and the service on Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, open the most recent award notice, and read the supplier it names. Then check for later change or termination notices before treating that supplier as the current holder.
How do I tell if there is an incumbent I cannot beat?
Read its award record at that buyer. An incumbent that has won the buyer's work before, holds several awards from the buyer, or already sits on the buyer's newest framework is likely to be harder to displace than one on its first term or on a short interim contract.
Why do two notices for the same contract give different end dates?
Each portal holds its own copy, and the copies are entered separately. One Warrington waste contract carries end dates four years apart on two portals. Where they disagree, ask the buyer, and plan around the earlier date until you know.
Is the incumbent always named on the notice?
Not always. A shared award names several suppliers under one total, a framework call-off may be published only at framework level, and a subcontractor delivering the work does not appear at all.
Download the full report
Submit the form below to access the full report.
Want this analysis run on your own pipeline?
Start for free and run your real opportunities through Skim — see what the data says about your win chances.