Reading: contracts, suppliers and what is coming next.
Reading is a unitary authority in the South East. We hold 106 of its award notices, 11 contracts due to end within 18 months, and 1 committee paper 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 Reading's papers every weeknight. A value is published on 39 of those 106 award notices, so the total is a floor, not the council's spend.
Next committee meetings
The next 5 scheduled meetings at Reading, 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 | Licensing Applications Sub-Committee |
| 24 Sep 2026 | Access and Disabilities Working Group |
| 24 Sep 2026 | Audit and Governance Committee |
| 7 Oct 2026 | Planning Applications Committee |
| 13 Oct 2026 | Council |
Biggest suppliers
Ranked by total awarded value across every Reading 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Reed Specialist Recruitment Ltd | £45.0m | 1 |
| Travis Perkins Trading Company Limited | £14.0m | 2 |
| C.l.c. Contractors Limited | £8.0m | 2 |
| Novus Property Solutions Limited | £4.2m | 2 |
| PwC LLP | £4.0m | 1 |
Largest awards of the last 12 months
The biggest awards Reading 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Store | Travis Perkins Trading Company Limited | £14.0m | Framework call-off |
| Voids and Planned Maintenance | C.l.c. Contractors Limited | £8.0m | Framework call-off |
| Kitchen and Bathroom Replacement Programme | Novus Property Solutions Limited | £4.2m | Framework call-off |
| Reactive Repairs and Maintenance | Ui Social Infrastructure Limited | £2.0m | Framework call-off |
| HR & Payroll System | Softcat PLC | £1.9m | Framework call-off |
How the money is awarded
10% of Reading's awarded value went through open competition and under 1% was awarded directly. A further 53% sits on notices that do not state a route at all. 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.
- Other/Unspecified 53% (£51.5m)
- Framework/DPS 37% (£35.4m)
- Competed 10% (£9.6m)
- Direct under 1% (£35,000)
Contracts expiring within 18 months
The 5 largest by value on record for Reading, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Feb 2028 | 17 | Managed Service for Temporary Agency Staff - (ESPO 653F_23 Lot 1b Master ('Master Vendo… | Reed Specialist Recruitment Ltd | £45.0m |
| 18 Feb 2027 | 5 | Digital Transformation Delivery Partner - CCS MCF3 RM6187 - AWARD | PwC LLP | £4.0m |
| 31 Mar 2027 | 6 | Caversham Road Pods and The Nova Project 2024/25 - AWARD | Launchpad Reading | £2.2m |
| 31 Jan 2027 | 4 | Reactive Repairs and Maintenance | Ui Social Infrastructure Limited | £2.0m |
| 31 Mar 2027 | 6 | Kitchen Supply | JTC Furniture Group Limited | £1.8m |
6 more Reading contracts expire by 20 March 2028. Start a free trial to see them.
Procurement radar
Committee papers Reading 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Jul 2026 | CQ1- Use of tribunals in commissioning education provision and transport for children with SENDUse of tribunals in commissioning education provision and transport for children with SEND There is a widespread view among professionals working in education that I would like to investigate. | Adult Social Care, Children's Services and Education Committee |
This is the raw feed, not the brief: a subscriber gets only the items that match their business, scored, with the so-what written out. Start a free trial.
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
Where Reading 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 Reading. 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 Reading's own published papers, at https://democracy.reading.gov.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 Reading'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.