Christmas deadlines 2025, fewer Christmas tenders but at what cost?

5 years ago I started publishing our “Christmas Grinch” series.

Essentially all we did was name names and point fingers at the procurement villains who were asking bidders for responses to bids during the Christmas holidays*.

It struck a chord probably because I was sufficiently cheesed off to name names and also because there is good data to show that tenders with less competition deliver less value for money and unsurprisingly these tenders got less competition.

Back when we started it was normal for contracting authorities to publish dozens of contracts between Christmas and New Year. Just two years ago Hull City Council hit ‘send’ on 66 different tenders with Christmas deadlines. Yet this year, in the UK at least, we’re seeing much more manageable numbers.

In fact, the highest number we’ve found is 11 tenders from the South Downs National Park Authority, next we have 8 tenders from Swansea Council and then there are three organisations with 7 tenders due over the Christmas holidays (Rhondda, Maidstone NHS and Global Green Growth Institute).

I seriously doubt that my passive aggressive publishing had anything meaningful to do with these changes, but I like to think we’re on the right side of this argument.

That said, there’s still something not right here, we’ve still got 397 tenders with holiday deadlines, 37 of which have a deadline of the 31st of January. Maidstone NHS have got 6 tenders with deadlines of New Year’s Eve which seems like an attempt to avoid competition rather than encourage it. One of the New Year’s Eve specials is the Legal Aid Agency’s civil legal aid services (a reopening of the 2024 contract) which must have lawyers up and down the country crying into their Christmas lunches.

A special mention must go to the Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust who’ve given us our first Christmas Day deadline for the UK. https://uk.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/100241/0/0?returnUrl=ctm/Supplier/PublicTenders&b=UK

Outside the UK bidders are faring less well. Germany is serving up 1,546 holiday deadlines including 55 New Year’s Eve deadlines and France is providing 1,457 holiday deadlines with 81 on New Year’s Eve. Canadians can look forward to 199 New Year’s Eve deadlines to the USA’s 55. In terms of the most voluminous publishers of holiday deadlines, France’s Établissements de santé et médico-sociaux has published 65 tenders with holiday deadlines and the USA’s NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support Mech has published 57.

However this kind of analysis deserves some balance. It is easy to point at procurement teams and demand that they do better, but what is a sensible set of parameters here? Given any form of say in the matter suppliers would tell procurement teams to avoid deadlines during Christmas, Easter, the summer holidays, Passover, Ede, Ramadan, the Mexican Day of the Dead and probably harvest time as well. Not to mention avoiding submission dates that coincide with other bids and other pressing matters such as the World Cup.

We all need to be careful not to fall into the trap of lazily damning procurement teams who have a range of competing priorities to handle, including keeping the lights on, the rubbish collected, the planes flying and roads clear.

You get my drift.

As we head into Christmas, we wish all our customers huge success in their bids and if you’re looking for better data on bidding opportunities, look no further than @Open Opportunites.

* Christmas deadlines are defined as between the 20th of December and 7th of Jan and we’ve excluded countries in Asia and Africa from the research in order to focus on countries with Christian Holiday observance.

Ian Makgill

Ian Makgill – Founder, Open Opportunities Ian Makgill is the Founder and Managing Director of Open Opportunities, a leading organisation dedicated to transparency and open data in global public procurement. Ian has led the development of one of the world’s largest open datasets on government spending and contracting. The platform, born from his frustration with the inaccessibility of official procurement data, now hosts information on trillions of pounds in public expenditure and millions of tender documents. His work has been part of the Open Data Institute’s Start-Up Programme and is widely cited in UK open-data policy circles. Ian created Open Opportunities (OpenOpps.com)—the world’s largest repository of Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) tender notices, publishing over 10,000 new records per day and powering APIs used by the UK Department for International Trade and other organisations. His work has supported governments in the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Colombia and Indonesia, as well as international institutions including the OECD and the Inter-American Development Bank. Ian has advised governments from Colombia to Indonesia on how to implement and improve procurement data systems, to combat corruption, improve efficiency and reduce carbon. Beyond entrepreneurship, Ian is a recognised open-data researcher and advocate. He has contributed to landmark studies on procurement transparency, including for the Institute for Government and the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, and serves as an advisor to the Open Contracting Partnership. His analysis and commentary on open government and procurement reform have appeared in The Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Economist, and The Spectator. Academic and Research Contributions Ian has collaborated extensively with academic researchers on the economics and social impact of open data. His company’s datasets are regularly used in scholarly work on procurement transparency and corruption reduction. Ian has written and presented on the use of data to improve public procurement, he has a particular interest in using open data to reduce CO2 emissions. Ian sat on the UK Government’s Open Data User Group and continues to make the case for transparency in contracting and spending around the world.

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