If you’ve ever searched for public sector opportunities and thought, “Why does one notice tell me that the contract is expiring on 30/06/2028, another says the length of the contract is 36 months, and another does not tell me any information related to the length of the award”, you’re not alone.
This is one of the most frustrating parts of working with procurement data across the UK and Ireland.
The short answer is that notices are not all created equal. Different regions use different rules. Different notice types ask for different fields. Some require duration, some support exact dates, and some let buyers choose between structured fields and free text.
Contract values follow the same pattern. Sometimes you get the awarded value. Sometimes you get a maximum estimate. Sometimes you get a framework ceiling. Sometimes the notice is not really trying to tell you the final value at all.
At Stotles, we ingest notices from every UK and Ireland source into one normalised data model, so we see these inconsistencies every day. Here's what causes them.
Public sector procurement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland now sits under the Procurement Act 2023 regime, which went live on 24 February 2025. Scotland remains under its own Scottish procurement legislation, the Procurement (Scotland) Regulations 2016. The Republic of Ireland uses eTenders and EU eForms. That means the market looks joined up from a supplier point of view, but the data model underneath it is not.
A tender notice, a contract details notice, a contract award notice, a contracts register entry, and a termination notice are not trying to answer the same question. Some are there to launch an opportunity. Some confirm a contract has been entered into. Some record how it ended. If you compare them as if they were a single standard object, the data will appear inconsistent even when the buyer has followed the rules.
In England and Wales, contract details notices must include contract value and duration. They must also set out the estimated date when, or period over which, goods, services or works will be supplied, and the end date of any options to extend or renew. That is helpful, but it still does not force every buyer to publish one neat base expiry date in a single field.
In Ireland, the eForms system is built around a mix of mandatory and optional fields, and the eTenders user guidance explicitly says the “Estimated Duration and Renewal of the Contract” sections are optional in the contract notice workflow it describes. That makes it much more likely that one buyer uses dates, another uses months, and another leaves the structured field blank and relies on text elsewhere.
Under the Procurement Act guidance in England and Wales, the notice must include a maximum value, and that maximum must include the value of any options in the public contract. In Ireland, the estimated contract value under the EU rules is based on the total amount payable, net of VAT, including options and renewals set out in the procurement documents. So the number you see can be a ceiling or full-lifecycle estimate, not the day-one signed amount.
Even where the rules are the same, buyers do not all complete notices in the same way. One buyer writes “36 months.” Another writes “01/07/2026 to 30/06/2029.” Another writes “2 years with 2 optional extensions.” All of those can reflect the same commercial reality. The rules set the floor. They do not guarantee clean, standardised data. This is an inference from the way the notice frameworks are designed and the room they leave for different formats.
In England, the post-24 February 2025 regime requires contract details notices to include contract value and duration, the estimated date when or period over which supply happens, and the end date of any options to extend or renew. It also requires the maximum value to include options. So if you are wondering why one notice shows a precise date and another just shows “48 months,” the answer is usually that the notice framework accepts duration-style reporting rather than forcing one exact expiry date field.
That same logic explains the value gap. A figure on the notice may be a maximum estimated value, not just the initial signed value. If options are never exercised, the final value reported later can end up lower than the earlier contract details notice suggested.
Wales sits very close to England on this point. The Procurement Act 2023 and the Procurement (Wales) Regulations 2024 came into force on 24 February 2025, and the Welsh guidance says contract details notices must include value, duration, the estimated date when or period over which goods, services or works will be supplied, and the end date of any options to extend or renew. It also says the required maximum value must include options.
So in Welsh data, the same pattern shows up. You will often find duration or supply-period information more reliably than one clean expiry date. You may also find a higher value than expected because the notice is designed to reflect the maximum contract value, not just the first committed spend.
Northern Ireland is a little more layered. Procurement is a transferred matter there, and Northern Ireland Public Procurement Policy is mandatory for central government departments, non-departmental public bodies and public corporations. At the same time, the transferred Northern Ireland authorities are still covered by the Procurement Act framework, subject to some differences and exemptions.
That matters because many of the practical notice patterns still look familiar. You may still see duration more often than one exact expiry field, but Northern Ireland also has its own carve-outs. For example, transferred Northern Ireland authorities are exempt from the requirement to publish a copy of the contract alongside the contract details notice, unless the contract is awarded under a reserved procurement arrangement. That makes it harder to recover missing end dates or values from the underlying contract document.
Scotland is the standout. Under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, authorities must keep a public contracts register for regulated contracts, and that register must include the estimated value, the start date, the end date provided for in the contract or, if there is no date specified, the circumstances in which the contract will end, plus the duration of any extension period.
That means Scotland is often the strongest place to find a true contract endpoint. If a Scottish notice looks thin, the contracts register is usually the better place to look. The catch is that the recorded value is still an estimate, not necessarily the actual spend.
In the Republic of Ireland, notices are published via eTenders and EU eForms. The current setup includes eForms for below-threshold contract notices and contract award notices, including framework call-offs and low-value awards made off platform, but the government also says these newer eForms have fewer fields than the earlier mirrored versions.
The underlying EU eForms framework also uses a mix of mandatory and optional fields, and Irish eTenders guidance says the “Estimated Duration and Renewal of the Contract” sections are optional in the contract notice flow it describes. That is a big reason why Irish notices can vary so much between exact dates, duration in months, and free-text descriptions.
Value follows the same pattern. EU procurement rules calculate the estimated value on the total amount payable, excluding VAT, including options and renewals set out in the procurement documents. So a figure in an Irish notice may be a full estimated contract value or framework-level number, not the clean supplier revenue number you want to analyse.
If you are tracking opportunities, incumbents, renewals, or whitespace, do not treat “expiry date” and “contract value” as universal fields across UK and Ireland procurement data.
Instead, treat them as a set of separate signals:
That is the only practical way to compare notices across regions without flattening away the policy differences that created the data in the first place.
Usually, it is not because a buyer has been told not to publish it.
It is because the notice type did not require that exact field, the regional rulebook allowed a different format, the value included options or was within the framework scope, or the buyer had more than one valid way to express the same thing. Once you see that, the inconsistency starts to make sense.
So if you have ever looked at a notice and thought, “Why is this in months, not dates?” or “Why is the value missing here but present there?” the answer is not just messy data.
It is policy, notice design, and buyer behaviour all showing up in the same record.
That is exactly why procurement intelligence needs more than scraping. It needs context.
The value shown depends on the notice type. A contract details notice under the Procurement Act 2023 must show the maximum value including all options, not the day-one signed amount. Award notices may show actual spend. Framework notices show ceiling values. So the same contract can legitimately appear at three different values across its lifecycle.
The Procurement Act 2023 requires contract details notices to include duration, the estimated period of supply, and the end date of any options to extend. It does not force a single clean expiry date field. Buyers can comply by entering "36 months" or a specific date, so both formats appear in the data.
The Scottish public contracts register is usually the most reliable source. Under the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, authorities must record the start date, the end date provided for in the contract, the duration of any extension period, and the estimated value for every regulated contract. If a Scottish notice looks thin, check the register first.
Irish eTenders uses the EU eForms framework, which mixes mandatory and optional fields. The "Estimated Duration and Renewal of the Contract" sections are optional in the contract notice flow, and Ireland's newer below-threshold eForms have fewer fields than earlier versions. So missing values usually reflect optional-field behaviour, not non-compliance.
Treat "expiry date" and "contract value" as multiple separate signals, not single fields. Compare start date, stated duration, extension options, maximum end date, termination date, estimated value, maximum value with options, framework ceiling, and call-off value as distinct data points. This is the only way to compare regions without losing the policy detail that created the differences.
No, usually not. Under the Procurement Act 2023, the value on a contract details notice must be the maximum estimated value including options. Final spend is often lower if extensions go unused. For actual paid values, suppliers need to look at later transparency notices, supplier payment data, or framework call-off records
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