Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council: its biggest suppliers, and what it is buying next.
Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council is a metropolitan borough in the North West. We hold 488 of its award notices, 13 contracts due to end within 18 months, and 7 committee papers from the last 120 days that talk about buying. Everything here comes from public records: award notices the council itself published, and the papers it publishes before each committee meeting.
Data updated: 20 September 2026 (committee papers) | 18 September 2026 (award notices)
GovLeads reads Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council's papers every weeknight. A value is published on 256 of those 488 award notices, so the total is a floor, not the council's spend.
Next committee meetings
The next 5 scheduled meetings at Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, taken from the council's own calendar. Papers usually appear five clear working days beforehand, and we read them the night they land.
| Date | Committee |
|---|---|
| 22 Sep 2026 | Place Scrutiny Committee |
| 22 Sep 2026 | Standards Committee |
| 25 Sep 2026 | Schools Forum |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Cabinet |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Executive Cabinet Member for Children's Services |
Source: Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council's published committee calendar.
Biggest suppliers
Ranked by total awarded value across every Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council award notice we hold. Values on multi-supplier frameworks are shared across the suppliers named on them, so a place on a large framework does not inflate a single firm.
| Supplier | Awarded value | Awards |
|---|---|---|
| Lifeways Community Care | £126m | 2 |
| Creative Support | £126m | 2 |
| Agilisys Limited | £55.4m | 3 |
| Capital & Centric | £28.2m | 1 |
| Faun Zoeller (UK) Limited | £7.8m | 3 |
Largest awards of the last 12 months
The biggest awards Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council has notified in the last year. Awards sharing a title and end date are collapsed into a single row, so a framework or dynamic purchasing system appears once rather than once per supplier.
| Award | Supplier | Value | Route |
|---|---|---|---|
| TC104 - Special Education Need (SEN) Outreach Service | Woodbridge Trust | £3.3m | Open |
| (TC149) - Single Homeless Emergency Accommodation - Direct Award | Adullam Homes Housing Association Limited | £2.2m | Direct award |
| TC052 - Social Inclusion Services | BackUp North West | £1.4m | Open |
| TC172 - Hire and Maintenance of Compact Sweepers | Dawsongroup Environmental Municipal Civil Ltd | £605,379 | Restricted |
| TC243 - The Supply of Horticultural Machinery | Balmers GM | £413,520 | Open |
How the money is awarded
88% of Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council's awarded value went through open competition and under 1% was awarded directly. Directly awarded work is the part of the market that never reaches a competitive notice, so it is the part you have to see coming upstream.
- Competed 88% (£463m)
- Other/Unspecified 12% (£61.6m)
- Direct under 1% (£2.2m)
Contracts expiring within 18 months
The 5 largest by value on record for Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, of those with an end date inside 18 months. A re-procurement decision normally reaches a committee months before the contract itself runs out, which is the point at which scope is still moveable, so the months-left column matters as much as the value.
| Ends | Months left | Contract | Supplier | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Jun 2027 | 9 | TC007 - Learning Disability Supported Living Services4 award notices, shown once | framework, 2 suppliers | £252m |
| 23 Jul 2027 | 10 | TC130 - Community Services Flexible Purchasing System (FPS)10 award notices, shown once | framework, 10 suppliers | £16.0m |
| 8 Oct 2026 | under 1 | TC020 - Alternative Provision (Education) Flexible Purchasing System (FPS)16 award notices, shown once | framework, 16 suppliers | £7.2m |
| 30 Jun 2027 | 9 | TC078 - Learning Disability and Autism Supported Living Services | Thera Trust | £6.1m |
| 31 Mar 2027 | 6 | TC026 - All Age Advocacy Services | Voiceability Advocacy | £1.2m |
8 more Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council contracts expire by 20 March 2028. Start a free trial to see them.
Procurement radar
Committee papers Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council published in the last four months whose title uses the language of buying: a tender, an award, an extension, a gateway report, a waiver, or a procurement strategy, policy or performance report. It is a title match, so the odd paper lands here on a word rather than a decision.
| Meeting | Paper | Committee |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Aug 2026 | CRSTS Electric Vehicle Infrastructure ProcurementProceed with the CRSTS Procurement and contract award of £692,000, which allows the phased delivery of on street and public charge points by 2028 in line with the approved Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Plan. | Executive Cabinet Member Highways, Transport, Planning and Development |
| 28 Jul 2026 | Procurement of Oracle Fusion Software licences and Cloud Services Agreement(Oracle Fusion) For contracts with a value exceeding £500,001, the Corporate Procurement Team is likewise required to undertake a competitive tender process or utilise an appropriate framework agreement. | Executive Cabinet Member Deputy Leaders Portfolio |
| 7 Sep 2026 | Adults Advocacy Service RecommissioningOption 1 (preferred option) New Adult social care advocacy contract - to approve procurement through an open tender a new Adults advocacy contract, for the value of £308,000 with the addition of 2% annual uplift from year two of the… | Executive Cabinet Member for Adults and Community Housing Services |
| 21 Aug 2026 | Commissioning of SEND and Inclusion Support Services…This report seeks approval for (1) the commissioning of three SEND inclusion services to support children, young people and schools from September 2026, and (2) approval to undertake procurement processes for longer-term contracts to be in place for September 2027. | Executive Cabinet Member for Children's Services |
| 27 Jul 2026 | 26969 S19 AP Commissioning Arrangements Committee Report and EIAIn addition, to approve an open procurement process to contract the service for 12-months from September 2027, and to undertake a commissioning and procurement process to tender from September 2028 for a longer-term 3-year contract. ‘Proposal’ status (please tick) Proposed… | Executive Cabinet Member for Children's Services |
| 7 Sep 2026 | Children's Advocacy and Independent Visiting Commissioning ArrangementsOption 1 (preferred option): To approve an open procurement tender for a new joint Children’s Advocacy and Independent Visiting contract, for the value of £124,500 within year 1 of the contract with the addition of the 2% annual uplift each… | Executive Cabinet Member for Children's Services |
| 27 Jul 2026 | Family Hubs 2026-2029 Commissioning Arrangements for Inclusion and EngagementTitle of report or proposal: Report Number Family Hubs 2026-2029 Commissioning Arrangements for Inclusion and Engagement 27242 Brief details of proposal, including the aims, objectives and purpose (all strategies, policies, reviews, projects, existing proposals, etc will be referred to as… | Executive Cabinet Member for Children's Services |
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Nearby councils
Suppliers rarely sell to one council alone. These are the authorities next door, and the ones covering the same ground at a different tier.
Councils it borders
Covering the same ground
Where Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council spends most
The service areas taking the largest share of awarded value here. Each one has its own page explaining what we watch for.
Where this comes from
Awards, suppliers and expiry dates come from award notices published to Contracts Finder and Find a Tender by Bolton. The award data set was last refreshed on 18 September 2026, so notices published since then are not yet counted here. Values are as notified; where a notice names several suppliers, the value is shared across them.
Committee papers and meeting dates come from Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council's own published papers, at https://bolton.moderngov.co.uk. Every paper linked above is on the council's own site. Committee-paper figures were extracted on 20 September 2026.
What we leave out. A notice naming more than one buying authority is excluded, because it does not say how the value splits between them. So are notices from bodies that share this council's name but are separate organisations, such as the local college or NHS trust. Both would otherwise be counted here as Bolton's.
Nothing on this page is modelled, estimated or inferred. Every number is a count or a sum over those two public sources. Where a figure would be a guess, it is left out.