Consultants Still Winning Huge Government Contracts.

Consultancies have won contracts worth more than £700m from UK government in Covid related contracts since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Concerningly, many of the contracts were awarded without competitive tender.

The Financial Times has previously reported on Whitehall departments facing criticism for a “worrying lack of transparency” over many of the deals, which include supporting the Test and Trace scheme and the vaccine rollout.

Last year, analysis found that Deloitte alone had been handed 26 contracts worth up to £278.7m. But details of several more contracts with the firm have now been published, totalling more than £10m, including work on the government’s Covid pass programme.

KPMG was awarded a £4m contract by the Department for Transport to research the pandemic’s impact on Transport for London.

The government also paid consultancy firm McKinsey the equivalent of £14,000 a day to create a replacement for Public Health England, in May 2020.

Consulting companies have mostly fared incredibly well through the pandemic, not surprising though as OpenDemocracy revealed that departments were still giving contracts to consultancy firms without competition.

To aid with transparency of government procurement, we’ve created a table and published every known contract in the UK for consulting contracts around the UK since March 2020, giving anyone the ability to monitor contracts being issued by the Government as part of their Covid-19 response. You’ll find the table here.

If you’d like to talk to us about our procurement data or our research capabilities, get in touch.