Focus on Redfern

Nov. 9, 2017, 6 a.m. by HelenMcNally

Spend Network / Open Opps

In November 2011, Redfern caused shock in the travel management industry by ousting Capita to win the domestic part of a travel contract for civil servants, despite only being a medium-sized, Yorkshire-based company.¹

Awarding such a large contract to a then-unknown company was controversial at the time,² Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude had to defend the policy of breaking down contracts to allow SMEs a foothold.³ However, since then Redfern has ballooned in size,⁴ using automation to make a high volume of transactions for travel arrangements,⁵ and renewed to contract in September 2015.⁶

By analysing the government’s open data on spending with external suppliers, we can see a rise in spend with Redfern from 2012 to 2016 of 41% a year on average.

The bulk of this change was between 2012, when spend totalled £6.3m, to 2013 when spend reached  £19.2m. The highest spend was in 2015, at £26.7m. Spend peaked in July 2015 when one £2.7m payment from the National Offenders Monitoring Service made up 10% of the total for the year. Spend has dipped since then, 2016 was the lowest spend since 2013, back at £19.2m.

For the duration of Redfern’s first large contract, 2012 to 2015, the total spend recorded in the central government data was £61.8m. This is despite the value of contract being estimated at over £100m.⁷ This discrepancy could be caused by the £25,000 transaction value threshold for reporting spend. For central government, publishing transactions below this is discretionary, and our data shows that the average central govt transaction value with Redfern is £24.3k.

In December 2016, Redfern was bought by the Australian firm Corporate Travel Management for an undisclosed sum.⁸ We will continue to monitor how this affects Redfern’s revenues from government as they continue to deliver travel arrangements for civil servants, particularly as this contract is due to be renewed in 2018.

Redfern’s revenues mainly come from central government:

Redfern’s top ten biggest buyers are: