Darlington: who supplies it, and how much it awards without a contest.
Darlington is a unitary authority in the North East. We hold 1,502 of its award notices, and 165 contracts due to end within 18 months. 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 Darlington's papers every weeknight. A value is published on 1,333 of those 1,502 award notices, so the total is a floor, not the council's spend.
Next committee meetings
The next 5 scheduled meetings at Darlington, 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 |
|---|---|
| 23 Sep 2026 | Planning Applications Committee |
| 24 Sep 2026 | Council |
| 25 Sep 2026 | LA Governors Appointments Committee |
| 29 Sep 2026 | Health and Wellbeing Board |
| 6 Oct 2026 | Cabinet |
Biggest suppliers
Ranked by total awarded value across every Darlington 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Edf Energy Customers Limited | £19.0m | 1 |
| Comensura Limited | £18.0m | 1 |
| Care Line Homecare Limited | £12.5m | 201 |
| Springfield Home Care Services Limited | £9.6m | 159 |
| Adavo Limited | £8.9m | 2 |
Largest awards of the last 12 months
The biggest awards Darlington 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stock Condition Surveys | Savills UK Limited | £950,000 | Framework call-off |
| Digital XT Warden Call Systems to Housing Schemes Provision and Installation | SecureShield Limited | £901,235 | Framework call-off |
| Homecare Service Placement - ID175751 - Lot 5 | Dimensions Care Limited | £478,514 | Framework call-off |
| Merchant Payment Acceptance 2 via Lot 1 of RM6325 Framework | Worldpay (UK) Limited | £432,000 | Framework call-off |
| Architecturally Led Consultancy Team for Skinnergate | Bloom Procurement Services Limited | £409,000 | Framework call-off |
How the money is awarded
18% of Darlington's awarded value went through open competition and 47% 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.
- Direct 47% (£135m)
- Framework/DPS 25% (£72.1m)
- Competed 18% (£52.0m)
- Other/Unspecified 9% (£26.5m)
Contracts expiring within 18 months
The 5 largest by value on record for Darlington, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 May 2027 | 8 | PB2021/00470 Insurance Placement for Darlington Borough Council | Zurich Municipal | £2.4m |
| 31 Mar 2027 | 6 | P2020/2185/NE Orchard Housing Software | Orchard Information Systems Limited | £1.6m |
| 25 Sep 2026 | under 1 | PB2023-00975 - Adult Residential Placement for ID5011468 | Active Care Group | £1.5m |
| 31 Mar 2027 | 6 | Internal and External Decoration including Pre-Paint Repairs to Council Dwellings and B… | Mitie Property Services (UK) Ltd - Painting | £1.3m |
| 16 Jul 2027 | 9 | PB2023-01123 - Adult Residential Placement for ID413456 | Tees Grange Health Care Ltd | £1.2m |
160 more Darlington contracts expire by 20 March 2028. Start a free trial to see them.
Procurement radar
Committee papers Darlington published in the last four months whose title uses the language of buying.
No procurement decision reached a committee here in the last four months. Darlington published 340 papers in that window and none of them is titled as a tender, an award, an extension or a waiver.
That is common and it is not a gap in our reading: most councils delegate day-to-day buying to officers, and only the larger decisions reach a committee with a paper to their name. The award notices above are the fuller record of what this council actually buys.
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 Darlington 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 Darlington. 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 Darlington's own published papers, at https://darlington.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 Darlington'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.