Research and analysis

Annual qualifying defence contract statistics: 2019/20

The annual statistics bulletin is part of a regular published series of statistical reports, containing analysis of key QDC/QSC information.

Documents

2019/20 annual statistics infographic

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Accompanying data book

Details

This annual publication includes analysis of all contracts that became a QDC/QSC between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2020, and includes data for Quarter 4 2019/20 within the quarterly series of bulletins. Data is also presented from April 2015, when the first QDC was entered into.

The SSRO was notified of 296 contracts that became QDCs/QSCs by 31 March 2020 Contractors have one month after the date the contract becomes a QDC to submit reports, and as of 30 April 2020 the SSRO had received contract reports for 278 contracts that became QDCs/QSCs between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2020, which the analysis is based on. This comprised 236 QDCs and 42 QSCs, across 120 different contracting companies.

The estimated total contract price of QDCs/QSCs was £8.9 billion in 2019/20, and £40.8 billion overall. The average estimated contract profit rate of QDCs/QSCs increased from 8.31 per cent for QDCs/QSCs in 2018/19 to 9.00 per cent for QDCs/QSCs in 2019/20.

All data is based on the latest submitted report for each QDC/QSC, to reflect the most recently reported contract data, and may not reflect values at contract completion.

The publication schedule for the next four quarterly bulletins is as follows:

Quarterly bulletin Date Published
Q1 2020/21 18 August 2020
Q2 2020/21 November 2020
Q3 2020/21 February 2021
Q4 2020/21 Annual Statistics – June 2021
Published 18 June 2020
Last updated 18 August 2020 + show all updates
  1. Updated chart titles for Figures 8 and 9, and corrected the totals in Figure 8 of the accompanying databook.

  2. First published.