In relation to contracting and expenditure, this enables the taxpayer to clearly understand how and where their money is spent.

Supply base

The Met Office currently has an active supply base of 1,598 companies, 22% of which are classed as small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). 26% of spend in the financial year of 2011/2012 was made with our SME suppliers.

Contract data

The Met Office publishes the following procurement contract information free of charge via the  Contract Finder website:

• Contracts awarded over the value of £10,000 in full online
• New tender documents for contracts over £10,000 no more than 24 hours after release to bidders for public viewing

Suppliers bidding for Met Office contracts should be aware that if they are successful, the resulting contract will be published. In some circumstances, limited redactions will be made to contracts before they are published in order to comply with existing law and for the protection of national security.

Spend data

Details of our monthly expenditure and payments made via Government Procurement Card (GPC) can be found via the file links below.

How we work

Files for general expenditure (i.e. non-GPC) generated prior to October 2011 will only contain data for transactions over £25,000 in value. After that date information on all Met Office expenditure is supplied.

Each CSV file will contain the following information, as required by HM Treasury:

• Date of payment
• Expense type, e.g. accommodation, software licences
• Expense area, e.g. HR Human Resources
• Supplier name
• Transaction number (n.b. the same transaction number may be applied to several payment lines when an order was for the benefit of various areas of the Met Office. For the full value of the payment, please total all amounts spent against a single transaction number)
• Value of the payment excl. VAT