BidSkim
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Service market

Leadership development contracts

UK public sector · 256 contracts awarded in the 12 months to 6 October 2026

Covering 600+ buyer portals · 5 years of records · Updated 6 October 2026 · How we count

Contracts awarded
256
Last 12 months
Median contract
£50k
Recorded value
Recorded value
£73.7m
248 of 253 main-service contracts have a published value
Buyers
146
Suppliers
212

BidSkim assigns contracts to services from the notice text. How services are assigned

What stands out

  • The five suppliers that won the most leadership development contracts took 9% of them (23 of 256).
  • Contracts awarded per quarter held steady across the period.
  • The median contract, £50k, is close to the median across education & training contracts (£54k).
  • London had the most contracts: 80, or 31% of the total.

Who buys leadership development

By contracts awarded, the 12 months to 6 October 2026.

  1. 1NHS England35 contracts
  2. 2UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)8 contracts
  3. 3Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs6 contracts
  4. 4Llywodraeth Cymru / Welsh Government6 contracts
  5. 5Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust5 contracts
  6. 6Department for Transport4 contracts
  7. 7NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership4 contracts
  8. 8Cumberland Council4 contracts
  9. 9UK Health Security Agency4 contracts
  10. 10Department for Work and Pensions4 contracts

Top leadership development contractors by contracts won

The 12 months to 6 October 2026.

  1. 1Cranfield University6 contracts
  2. 2Forward Institute5 contracts
  3. 3KPMG4 contracts
  4. 4The Value Circle4 contracts
  5. 5THE UNIVERSITY OF CUMBRIA4 contracts
  6. 6Saïd Business School3 contracts
  7. 7Pearson3 contracts
  8. 8The Whitehall and Industry Group3 contracts
  9. 9Innovas Consulting Solutions Ltd3 contracts
  10. 10Cortex-Training Ltd3 contracts

Latest and largest awards

Each links to the official notice.

Latest

Largest

Contracts awarded by quarter

35Q4 2025*74Q1 202664Q2 202680Q3 20263Q4 2026*
* part quarter

Where the contracts were awarded

England 229 · Wales 21 · Scotland 5 · Northern Ireland 1

London80North West24Wales21South East16Yorkshire and The Humber13North East12East Midlands10East of England10South West9West Midlands7Scotland3UK-wide or not stated51

What is included

Designed programmes and courses that develop senior, middle, first-line, aspiring and early career leaders and managers and the teams they lead: cohort leadership programmes, management skills training, team development and profiling, 360-degree feedback and graduate development curricula, often ILM or CMI accredited.

  • Senior and executive leadership programmes
  • System and place-based leadership programmes
  • Aspiring and future leaders schemes
  • Positive action leadership programmes for underrepresented staff
  • Leadership academy membership
  • Outdoor leadership development
  • Leadership networks and knowledge hubs run as part of a leadership offer
  • Facilitators for an in-house leadership programme
  • First-line and mid-level manager programmes
  • People manager development
  • ILM and CMI management qualifications
  • Management training modules for KTP associates
  • Programmes preparing staff for a management grade
  • Executive and senior team development
  • Team effectiveness and away days
  • Insights Discovery and similar profiling workshops
  • Action learning set facilitation
  • Personal, professional and team development lots
  • 360 feedback for managers
  • Cyclical 360 appraisal programmes
  • Feedback reports and debrief sessions
  • Graduate programme delivery
  • Early career talent development programmes
  • Placement-based graduate schemes
  • Board development programmes for boards, councillors and non-executives

What is not included

  • One-to-one coaching and coaching schemes bought on their own (edu.lead.executive-and-leadership-coaching)
  • Personal effectiveness and soft skills courses (edu.lead.personal-effectiveness-and-communication-skills)
  • HR process and employment practice courses (edu.lead.specialist-professional-cpd-courses)
  • University and business school executive education (edu.he.university-degrees-and-cpd-for-staff)
  • Leadership and management apprenticeships (edu.appr.leadership-management-apprenticeships)
  • NPQs, headship qualifications and school leadership CPD (edu.sch.school-staff-cpd-and-leadership-development)
  • Police graduate and detective entry routes under PEQF (edu.he.police-initial-entry-programmes)
  • Recruitment psychometrics, assessment centres and graduate recruitment (another industry: recruitment-hr)
  • Organisational culture and board effectiveness reviews (csl.strat.culture-values-and-edi, csl.strat.governance-reviews)
  • Coaching and mentoring for SMEs in business support programmes (csl.econ.business-support-programmes)
  • Survey platforms bought as software (it.ent.survey-consultation-platform)

Often bought by the same buyers