Literature review contracts

• The five suppliers that won the most literature review contracts took 15% of them (14 of 96).
• Contracts awarded per quarter held steady across the period.
• The median contract, £50k, is 38% below the median across consulting & accountancy contracts (£80k).

1. 1Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs14 contracts£800k
2. 2Natural England9 contracts£246k
3. 3Food Standards Agency7 contracts£691k
4. 4Environment Agency7 contracts£502k
5. 5Department for Education5 contracts£1.2m
6. 6Department of Health and Social Care5 contracts£533k
7. 7Scottish Government5 contracts£114k
8. 8Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)4 contracts£119k
9. 9Department for Work and Pensions2 contracts£1.1m
10. 10Joint Nature Conservation Committee2 contracts£530k

1. 1Bloom Procurement Services3 contracts£172k
2. 2Eunomia Research & Consulting Ltd3 contracts£160k
3. 3Ricardo Energy & Environment3 contracts£93k
4. 4Thinks Insight & Strategy3 contracts£85k
5. 5National Centre for Social Research2 contracts£1.5m
6. 6Centre for Strategy & Evaluation Services LLP2 contracts£397k
7. 7Harper Adams University2 contracts£174k
8. 8Ipsos2 contracts£171k
9. 9JBA Consulting2 contracts£124k
10. 10Fera Science Limited2 contracts£89k

Latest

• WP5 Social Science - The future of food regulation (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £50k

  Food Standards Agency to Basis Social · Awarded 25 September 2026

• ES RDE 143 - A Review of Autonomous Monitoring Methods in Highly Protected Marine Areas (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £25k

  Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to PML APPLICATIONS LTD · Awarded 24 September 2026

• research project on teenage relationship abuse, involving systems mapping and analysis of existing data (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £220k

  Home Office to City St George's, University of London · Awarded 23 September 2026

• NQB Effective Safe Staffing Evidence Reviews (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £17k

  NHS England to Birmingham City University, Staffordshire University and University of Hertfordshire · Awarded 23 September 2026

• CASCADE evidence synthesis and research for JNCC's Areas of Research Interest (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £490k

  Joint Nature Conservation Committee to University of Oxford · Awarded 22 September 2026

• Mapping and Discovery for a National Care Academy Model in Wales (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  Value not published

  Social Care Wales to Oxford Brookes University · Awarded 21 September 2026

• ES RDE 087 - Lowlands Peat Evidence Synthesis and knowledge gaps (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £98k

  Environment Agency to Moffatt and Nichol · Awarded 18 September 2026

• ES RDE 053 - Trees and Flood Risk (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £60k

  Environment Agency to JBA Consulting · Awarded 19 August 2026

• Refining Agricultural Land to Development Estimates in England Using Predictive Agricultural Land Classification (ALC) Mapping (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £20k

  Natural England to RSK · Awarded 14 August 2026

• Award of The Effectiveness of Environmental Targets: Evidence Review (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £24k

  Environmental Standards Scotland to ForgeFront · Awarded 13 August 2026

Largest

• Labour Market Evidence Synthesis & Dissemination (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £1.1m

  Department for Work and Pensions to Institute for Employment Studies · Awarded 11 November 2025

• Anti-Bullying & Behaviour Toolkit 2025/26 (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £735k

  Department for Education to Etio · Awarded 30 January 2026

• UKRI-5332 - Research and related services for Innovate UK provided by the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £300k

  UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to University of Warwick · Awarded 20 July 2026

• Bioavailability of Food Supplements (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £292k

  Food Standards Agency to Camrosh Limited · Awarded 14 May 2026

• Peat Evidence Review (official notice, opens in a new tab)

  £230k

  Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) UK Peatland Programme is hosted by The Wildlife Trusts and Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts · Awarded 15 December 2025

Desk review and synthesis of existing research and data on a defined question: literature reviews, rapid evidence assessments, systematic reviews and evidence summaries, reported as findings for policy or programme design.

• Literature reviews
• Rapid evidence assessments
• Systematic reviews
• Evidence summaries and research synthesis
• Evidence base reviews to inform programme or intervention design

• New primary research with people (see Social and consumer research)
• Health technology assessment reviews for NICE (see Health economics and health technology assessment)
• Technical or scientific studies that generate new data (see Technical research for standards and policy)

• Impact evaluation
• Social research
• Stakeholder engagement
• Longitudinal survey

• Statistical reporting
• Engineering research