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Capita last UK firm among government strategic tech suppliers Capita is now the only UK-headquartered company among the 12 tech firms on the UK government's strategic suppliers list. The other 11 technology suppliers on the list – Accenture, Atos, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Capgemini, CGI, DXC Technology, Fujitsu, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sopra Steria – are headquartered outside the UK.
The finding comes from Tussell's ninth UK strategic suppliers report, which found public sector spending with the group reached £5.48bn in the 2025/26 financial year.
Those suppliers are among the UK government's 36 strategic suppliers, which are split across technology (12), engineering and construction (7), outsourcing and facilities management (5), aerospace and defence (5), consulting (4) and telecoms (3). Capita's position as the last UK tech supplier follows the removal of three firms from the list in 2026 – two of them UK-headquartered, including the IT reseller Computacenter.
Capgemini is the largest tech supplier by FY25/26 spend, with £940m, ahead of IBM on £653m and Capita on £639m. Sopra Steria (£571m), Atos (£551m) and Accenture (£442m) follow, with Fujitsu (£388m), CGI (£374m), Oracle (£355m) and AWS (£350m) close behind. Microsoft (£124m) and DXC Technology (£92m) complete the dozen – a spread from £940m to £92m.
The figures cover direct spend only. Sales through resellers and channel partners are excluded, so Microsoft, Oracle and AWS – which sell heavily through the channel – are under-represented, and their true public sector footprint is larger than this ranking shows.
Who are the UK's strategic suppliers?
Strategic suppliers are private companies the Cabinet Office judges so critical to public services that it coordinates their relationship with government centrally. Each has had a Crown Representative since 2011, and since 2019, suppliers have had to sign a memorandum of understanding that puts the onus on them to report risk. Designation is not a spend ranking, though these firms typically take more than £100m a year from government.
The 36 suppliers, as of 1 July 2026, span six sectors:
Technology (12)
Engineering and construction (7)
Outsourcing & facilities management (5)
Aerospace and defence (5)
Consulting (4)
Telecoms (3)
The list reflects direct, centrally managed relationships, and excludes reseller and channel sales: Google Cloud does not appear at all, while AWS, Microsoft and Oracle are judged on direct spend rather than their full public sector footprint.
Central government accounts for the bulk of the tech spend, at £3.84bn. The NHS spends £600m with the 12, local government £286m, transport £264m, defence £250m and blue-light services £214m.
The £5.48bn is a floor. Several large buyers – including the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and NHS England – had not published full FY25/26 invoice data when Tussell extracted the figures in August 2026, and part of Ministry of Defence spending is exempt from publication for national security reasons.
According to Tussell, British firms' share of overall strategic supplier spend fell from 65% to 61% since FY20/21. Spending with the big four consultancies – Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC – dropped by 15% in real terms in the same period. Kier and Balfour Beatty now take 59% of construction spending with the sector's strategic suppliers, up from 33%.
Technology is the only strategic supplier sector that's growing.
The tech list matters because these are contracts that carry the government's most critical digital programmes. Eleven foreign-headquartered firms and one British firm concentrate delivery in a small group of suppliers, raise exit costs on long-running contracts, and leave little room for UK suppliers to break into the top tier. That matters most where a system runs for a decade or more, since switching suppliers on a live tax, benefits or health platform is slow, costly and politically fraught.
Individual buying patterns show how narrow that base can be. Fujitsu's £388m comes mostly from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), with £267m, and the Home Office, with £58m. AWS, on £350m, draws £124m from HMRC and £86m from the Home Office. Capita's £639m spreads across the Department for Work and Pensions (£148m), Transport for London (£147m) and the Department for Education (£65m), with a long tail of councils and departments behind them.
On the list, Fujitsu remains under scrutiny for its part in the Post Office Horizon scandal. The government's dependence on a fixed set of large suppliers is visible elsewhere too, from police forces' reliance on hyperscale cloud to the rush of artificial intelligence (AI) procurement that has handed Palantir £553m.
For UK tech firms, losing ground among the government's most important suppliers narrows the domestic base that British suppliers can sell into, at a time when ministers want more home-grown capability in cloud and AI.
The tension is that public sector tech spending is rising in value as the supplier base thins in national headquarters, at a time when the government is talking up sovereign capability and support for UK suppliers.
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