Spending by local government through the G-Cloud appears to have suffered a significant drop in November, according to the latest figures.
At first glance, purchases in the local authority category, which includes councils, housing associations and other local public bodies, appears to have risen to £1.95m from £1.72m the previous month.
However, this figure includes 30 purchases by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which seem to have this month been mistakenly added to the local government category by officials.
Removing the FCO figures leaves local government with just £1.45m in purchases, almost down to last year’s lowest level of £1.36m – recorded in July. It also equates to a 20.9% month-on-month drop.
There were 173 purchases made by local government on G-Cloud through the Digital Marketplace during the month, down from 205 in October. Bristol City Council made the highest number of purchases by an individual body in the category at 38, totalling £211,000.
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The largest single purchase was by Essex County Council, which paid £102,000 to online platform provider GovDelivery.
This month’s set of results also showed that October’s preliminary figure of £1.72m rose to £2.01m after late returns were added to the local government total – and a further set of FCO data is removed from the category
Across the whole of government, sales totalled £39.8m during November, up from £37.13m during the previous month.
In November, the government announced that 1,616 suppliers have been appointed to the seventh iteration of the G-Cloud framework.
G-Cloud 7 saw a higher number of new suppliers than any previous iteration of the G-Cloud framework at 709, 95% of which being small and medium sized enterprises.
According to the Crown Commercial Service, the total number of suppliers on the G-Cloud framework, including the sixth and seventh iterations, is 2,566, providing 22,080 services.
However, central government still dominates the purchases made through the framework, accounting for 91% of sales by value in November.
