Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many contracts that are worth (a) between £1 million and £3 million and (b) over £3 million their (i) Department and (ii) Department’s agencies and non-departmental public bodies (A) have agreed since 2010 and (B) are due to agree within the next 12 months; how much their Department has spent on monitoring each contract in each year since 2010; and how many officials have been working on that monitoring in each year since 2010.

Details of government contracts are published on Contracts Finder above £10,000, for the core Department, and above £25,000, for the wider public sector. As Contracts Finder was implemented from 2016, not all records before this time are held centrally.

The Department’s commercial pipeline is also publicly available on the GOV.UK.

The management of contracts held by the Department is devolved to individual Business Units and undertaken by identified Contract Managers within policy or operational teams, with the responsibility for monitoring contract performance resting with the Senior Responsible Officer. The contract management role is typically undertaken by policy or operational staff as part of their existing roles and therefore costs are not distinguishable. Specialist commercial oversight, training and support is provided by the DCMS Commercial function where necessary and as applicable, depending on the level of risk, complexity and value.