THE GERSHON GHOST: HOW THE UK BUILT A FRAMEWORK STATE

The problem Gershon was trying to solve

Before the Gershon Review, UK public sector procurement was fragmented to the point of absurdity. Individual NHS trusts, councils, government departments, schools, and police forces each ran their own procurement exercises for the same categories of service. The same FM contract would be tendered independently by neighbouring authorities using different specifications, different evaluation criteria, and different terms. The cost of procurement itself, the time and money spent running competitive tenders, was substantial and duplicated across thousands of buying organisations. An NHS trust could procure cleaning services with completely different terms from the trust next door. A local authority could run its own FM tender shaped around its own specification. A university estate director could build procurement around local operational needs rather than a national template. This created flexibility. It also created inconsistency. Government viewed it as duplication, inefficiency, and missed buying power. The Treasury wanted leverage. Gershon provided the blueprint. His prescription was aggregation. Create central buying organisations that negotiated once on behalf of many. Establish framework agreements that pre qualified suppliers, agreed terms, and allowed individual buyers to call off without running a full procurement. Reduce the cost of buying. Increase buying power. Standardise quality. The Office of Government Commerce, later absorbed into the Crown Commercial Service, became the primary vehicle. Regional and sector buying organisations followed: NHS Supply Chain, the Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation, the Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation, and others. The logic was sound. The execution created a system.

Gershon did not just suggest savings. He mandated a structural shift from departmental autonomy to centralised aggregation. Procurement was no longer just an operational function. It became a financial strategy. That change shaped everything that followed.

What a framework agreement actually is

A framework agreement is not a contract. It is a pre qualification mechanism. A buying organisation runs a competitive process to select a panel of suppliers who are deemed capable of delivering a category of services. Suppliers who pass the evaluation are appointed to the framework for a defined period, typically four years. Individual buyers can then call off from the framework, either by direct award to a named supplier or by running a mini competition among the framework suppliers. The framework agreement sets the terms: the maximum rates, the service specifications, the quality standards, the social value commitments, and the contractual conditions. Individual call offs operate within those terms. The buyer does not need to run a full Find a Tender procurement because the framework body has already done the competitive selection. This is the efficiency gain Gershon envisaged. A buyer who needs FM services can go to a framework, select from a pre qualified panel, and award a contract in weeks rather than months. The framework body absorbs the procurement cost. The buyer gets speed and compliance. The supplier gets access to a pipeline. Frameworks are not the only route. Dynamic Purchasing Systems (DPS), replaced by Dynamic Markets under the Procurement Act 2023, operate differently: they remain open to new suppliers throughout their life rather than closing the panel at appointment. DPS and Dynamic Markets are used for higher volume, lower value, or more commoditised requirements. This series focuses on frameworks because frameworks control the largest share of UK public sector FM spend, because the closed panel model creates the structural dynamics that this series examines, and because frameworks are the procurement mechanism that buyers, suppliers, and framework bodies treat as the default. DPS and Dynamic Markets are referenced where relevant but are not the primary subject. That is the theory.

What the theory does not account for

The framework model creates a filter. Suppliers who are not on the framework cannot compete for the work, regardless of their capability, their price, or their suitability for the specific requirement. The filter is applied years before any individual contract is defined. A supplier that was not on the framework when it was established is excluded from every call off for the next four years. The buyer’s choice is limited to whoever passed the evaluation at framework level, not whoever is best placed to deliver the specific contract. Traditional tendering meant competing for a live contract. Framework procurement means competing for permission to compete later. Suppliers spend tens of thousands on bid submissions, months preparing responses, and significant legal and compliance costs to win a place on a panel that may never produce a call off in their region or their service category. Many suppliers are not buying contracts. They are buying possibility. That is one of the least discussed truths in UK procurement. Frameworks do not just allocate work. They control market entry. And that makes them economically and politically significant in ways that go far beyond procurement convenience. On a small, standardised procurement this trade off is reasonable. On a large, complex, or bespoke FM contract, the trade off is more questionable. The framework was not designed for this requirement. The suppliers on it were not evaluated against this scope. The terms may not fit. But the framework is compliant, and compliance is what procurement teams are measured on.

How aggregation became addiction

The Gershon Review recommended aggregation as a tool. Twenty years later, it has become the default. The shift happened gradually, driven by three pressures that reinforced each other.

Compliance pressure

Public sector procurement is governed by legislation. The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, now replaced by the Procurement Act 2023, require competitive processes above defined thresholds. Using a framework is a demonstrably compliant route. Running an open tender is also compliant but takes longer, costs more, and carries more risk of challenge. For a procurement team measured on compliance, speed, and cost, the framework is the path of least resistance. Not because it delivers the best outcome. Because it delivers the safest process. No one gets criticised for using the approved route. Even if the operational result is average. It is easier to defend having used an approved framework than to explain why you challenged the market and selected the best operator through open tender. This is how procurement convenience quietly replaces value creation. And once that culture becomes normal, innovation becomes difficult.

Capacity pressure

Public sector procurement teams have been cut repeatedly since 2010. Fewer people, doing more procurements, with less specialist knowledge. A framework that provides a pre qualified panel, a template specification, and a standard set of terms reduces the burden on a team that does not have the capacity to run a sample or bespoke procurement from scratch. The framework compensates for capability the buying organisation no longer has.

Political pressure

Central government has pushed spend through mandated frameworks, particularly CCS frameworks, as a means of demonstrating aggregate purchasing power and reporting savings. Departments that do not use CCS frameworks must justify the decision. The incentive is to use the framework even where an alternative route might deliver better value, because non compliance with the central mandate creates political friction that compliance avoids. The result is a market where the framework is not chosen because it is the best route. It is chosen because it is the easiest route, the safest route, and in some cases the only route the buying team knows how to use. Aggregation, which was a recommendation, became a default. The default became a dependency. The dependency became a structure that the market now treats as permanent. And the system grew. What began as central government procurement reform expanded into NHS FM and soft services, education estates, local authority contracts, police and fire procurement, housing associations, and utilities. There are now estimated to be well over a thousand active frameworks across the wider public sector, operated by central government, local authority consortia, NHS bodies, university purchasing groups, and specialist sector organisations. That raises a question Gershon never anticipated: if frameworks were created to reduce duplication and simplify procurement, why are there now so many overlapping ways to buy the same service? Why do we have multiple routes to procure one security guard, one cleaning contract, one M&E maintenance provider? Efficiency was supposed to simplify. Instead, the system multiplied complexity.

The framework landscape in 2026

The UK FM framework market in 2026 is dominated by a small number of framework bodies, each serving different sectors, geographies, and buyer types.

Crown Commercial Service

CCS operates the largest national frameworks for FM services. RM6378 (FM and Workplace Services) is the current anchor framework, replacing RM6089 and RM6232. Its spending ceiling runs to tens of billions. CCS frameworks are mandated or strongly encouraged for central government departments and available to the wider public sector. CCS is funded centrally and charges suppliers a management fee on call off spend.

NHS Shared Business Services

NHS SBS operates frameworks specific to the health sector. Its FM frameworks cover cleaning, catering, portering, and other soft FM services for NHS trusts and integrated care systems. NHS SBS understands the clinical environment in ways that generic frameworks do not, but its supplier base is narrower and its lot structures are shaped by NHS procurement conventions that do not always align with FM market structures.

Regional and sector bodies

ESPO (Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation), YPO (Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation), and NEUPC, LUPC, SUPC (the university purchasing consortia) operate frameworks with strong regional or sector specific positions. Pagabo operates across public sector construction and FM with a commercial model that has grown aggressively. SCAPE serves local authority construction and estates. Each has its own evaluation approach, its own levy structure, and its own relationship with its buyer base. Article 8 of this series compares CCS, NHS SBS, ESPO, YPO, and Pagabo on a like for like basis. Article 3 examines the levy and management fee structures that fund these organisations and shape their incentives.

The question nobody is asking

Frameworks have been the default procurement route for UK public sector FM for twenty years. In that time, nobody has systematically examined whether they deliver the outcomes they were designed to deliver. Do frameworks deliver lower prices than open tender? Nobody has published a comparison. Do frameworks deliver better quality than open tender? Nobody has measured it. Do frameworks deliver genuine competition or a predictable shortlist? The data exists but has not been analysed publicly. Do the management fees and levies charged by framework bodies represent value for money for buyers and suppliers? Nobody has audited them. Do the social value commitments made at framework level translate into outcomes at contract level? Nobody has tracked them. Does the framework model systematically exclude capable regional and mid market suppliers from public sector FM work? Nobody has examined the concentration data. This series answers each of those questions. Not with opinion. With data. Baachu Rain tracks over 11,000 UK FM contracts. Framework call off data is embedded in that dataset. The analysis in this series is drawn from that data, supplemented by Freedom of Information requests and published contract award notices. The methodology is described at baachurain.com/framework-reckoning/methodology.

What this series is and what it is not

Frameworks exist for valid reasons. They can reduce procurement timescales. They can improve compliance and reduce the risk of legal challenge. They can simplify multi site buying. They can support under resourced procurement teams. They can improve governance and audit transparency. These are genuine benefits and this series does not deny them. The question is not whether frameworks should exist. The question is whether they still deliver what they were created to achieve. If the answer is yes, the evidence should be clear. If the answer is no, the system needs reform. This series is not anti framework. It is pro outcome. That distinction matters. Every article in this series states its evidence, cites its sources, and acknowledges the genuine case for frameworks before examining where the model falls short.

This is not an attack on frameworks. It is an audit of outcomes. The framework model has operated for twenty years without one. That is what this series provides.

Gershon’s ghost

Sir Peter Gershon’s Efficiency Review was a response to a real problem. The UK public sector was spending too much on the process of buying. Aggregation was a rational answer. Frameworks were a practical mechanism. But a mechanism designed for efficiency has become a structure that governs access. A tool designed to reduce cost has become a system that shapes markets. A model designed to complement open competition has, in many categories, replaced it. The FM market in 2026 is not the FM market of 2004. Contracts are more complex. Compliance requirements are more demanding. The workforce challenge is more acute. The technology landscape has changed fundamentally. The SFG20 Reckoning series examines how the maintenance standard the market prices on has not kept pace with these changes. The BCIS Intelligence Series examines how the cost benchmarking platform the market depends on has shifted to private equity ownership. The ERIC Reckoning examines how the NHS estate dataset that drives capital allocation has data quality limitations the market has not confronted. The PFI Reckoning examines what happens when 665 PFI contracts expire and authorities must reprocure FM services, in many cases through the very frameworks this series investigates. The question is whether the framework model has adapted to serve this market or whether the market has adapted to serve the framework model. That is the reckoning.