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The UK Government Spending Review 2025

The UK Government Spending Review 2025: Procurement Teams Need To Respond Before Opportunities Pass By. 

June’s 2025 UK Government Spending Review set out departmental budgets for day‑to‑day spending until 2029. In amongst sharing numbers equating to an overall 2.3% growth in investment, the document marks a pivotal shift in intent. The review’s HM Treasury authors describe a future public sector transformed by improved digitisation and utilisation of artificial intelligence (AI). 

Despite a rise in overall spending, the Labour government's spending review aims to build on strong digital and technology-based foundations to cut administrative costs and improve overall productivity. As a result, £1.2 billion, in addition to the recently announced Transformation Fund, has been allocated during the review period to drive forward digital development. Its primary focus? Cutting the cost of running government departments, allowing more money to reach frontline services. 

Improvement means modernising the civil service, making public sector decision-making more productive and agile, reducing back-office spend, and reducing administrative budgets by over 15% in real terms. This isn’t pie-in-the-sky thinking. The strategic review emphasises that detailed departmental analysis and concrete delivery planning have informed its recommendations. 

A Mission-Led Response To The UK Government Spending Review 

Despite ambitious targets, it’s clear that a slash-and-burn approach to administrative savings, efficiencies, and reforms is not on the treasury’s agenda. Despite a need to protect taxpayers' money, the public sector will be supported, across departments, in focusing on what matters most: delivery for UK citizens.

To make this clear, the review executive summary refers to a rewiring of The State using “new technology to digitise services and transform how government operates”; “creating a cost-conscious culture that relentlessly roots out waste, drives efficiency, and protects taxpayers’ money” and “establishing a leaner, higher-skilled civil service that is closer to the communities it serves.”

 

How Procurement Teams Can Deliver 2025 Spending Review’s Targets

Bloom, more than most, understands the vital role procurement can play in the improvements required. We work at the sweet spot where buyers meet the marketplace. It’s an area we’ve been innovating in for decades, giving us a head start when it comes to meeting the technological development goals of the 2025 Government Spending Review.

The spending review, in part at least, is an attack on the type of administrative waste, contract delays, and overspending that can result from pre-digitalisation procurement. Traditional procurement practices, for example, that see long-standing large, often multi-national suppliers unchallenged and costs spiralling, are surely in the firing line. Improvement has long been discussed, with the spotlight moving from department to department, dictated by the news agenda. Now, thanks to June’s spending review, real, tangible action is required across the board.  

If you’re working in a public service procurement team, you’re undoubtedly feeling the pressure already, but how do you respond? The most obvious solution is to seek support from your supply chain. If the task is to work more efficiently in a rapidly changing digital landscape, the secret, surely, lies in working with agile specialist suppliers who understand the brief. As a procurement professional, your task is to find organisations willing to work within the constraints of the government spending review, rather than fighting against it, and, as a result, achieve more for less. 

Size, Speed & Agility: Working To Achieve Spending Review Goals 

The spending review has put public procurement teams under pressure to deliver smarter services at lower costs. The solution is unlikely to lie in pushing the same suppliers harder. New challenges mean a new supplier landscape, one built around agility, innovation, and digital capability.

The good news is that specialist suppliers already exist in an ever-evolving market. They are often entrepreneurial SMEs bringing specialist expertise to support the transformation goals outlined in the spending review document. These dedicated suppliers are typically at the forefront of emerging new technologies, such as process automation, data handling and integration, AI implementation, and user-centred service design. Unlike larger incumbents, they bring speed and flexibility, adapting their solutions, products and services quickly without the overhead of legacy systems or large corporate structures. Imagine a service delivery partner creating response digital solutions right alongside you. With the right contract in place, it becomes possible to ‘turn on a sixpence’ and realign priorities if required. 

Today’s digitised suppliers understand how to deliver tangible improvements that streamline back-office processing, enhance data sharing, and maximise the efficiencies of front-end digital services, all key factors associated with cost reduction, genuinely, and excitingly, collaboratively. Crucially, they are not just tech-savvy; they are outcome-focused. Their value, in the context of the 2025 spending review, lies in the fact that they are rarely solely driven by reducing costs. Legacy and incumbent suppliers may offer procurers a choice. Cheaper or better. Being smaller, quicker and more flexible, today’s new generation of suppliers can, and typically want to, offer both. 

Connecting Public Purchasers With Innovative Suppliers

Meeting, engaging with and signing up cutting-edge suppliers needn’t be complex. With a pre-approved network of over 6,500 businesses and counting, for example, Bloom helps procurement teams move quickly while still complying with rules, regulations, and best practices. 

Through our fully managed procurement solution, we remove friction and delay from the buying process. Our NEPRO³ framework provides rapid access to a pre-approved diverse supplier base, comprising exciting companies eager to tackle the challenges outlined in this blog.  Our platform, Bloom Elevate, offers a new level of control and transparency, providing real-time data to track performance and spend throughout the contract delivery process. 

At every stage of procurement, Bloom bridges the gap between current public sector needs and innovative marketplace capabilities. We’ve become experts in match-matching buyers and sellers in our ever-changing landscape. If you’re facing the new post-spending review world, you needn’t do it alone. 

Act Now To Avoid Missing Opportunities 

The impact of the 2025 UK Government Spending Review isn’t coming. It’s not on the horizon. It’s already here. Departments are facing immediate cost-saving mandates, and procurement professionals like you are feeling the pressure to demonstrate fast, meaningful results. In response, the market is already shifting: agile suppliers are positioning themselves for public sector partnerships, and the most capable SMEs are being snapped up for high-impact projects.

Delaying action now means more than just falling behind; it means missing the chance to form the relationships that will shape your department’s delivery strategy altogether. Forward-looking procurement teams are already securing the digital and AI expertise they need. Why wait? 

Bloom offers a clear path to take action now. With compliant, pre-approved suppliers, a streamlined procurement process, and the backing of a platform designed for public sector success, you can move quickly and with confidence. The window to make a decisive change is open, but it won’t stay open forever. The faster you act in a procurement role, the more options you have. And, having reviewed your options, the sooner you connect with the right suppliers, the sooner you’ll see real results.

The UK Government Spending Review 2025 lays down a significant challenge to the UK public sector and its procurement professionals in particular. The good news is that tools to help drive success, such as Bloom’s platforms, already exist. If you accept the mission, success is far from impossible.