Annual qualifying defence contract statistics 2024-25
Source: gov.uk (2025-07-24)

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

This annual publication includes analysis of all contracts that became a QDC/QSC between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025, and data for Quarter 4 2024/25 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 762 contracts that became QDCs/QSCs by 31 March 2025. Contractors have one month after the date the contract becomes a QDC/QSC to submit reports and this analysis is based on 707 contracts for which the SSRO had received contract reports by 30 April 2025. These 707 contracts are comprised of 595 QDCs and 112 QSCs. The bulletin also includes statistics on the outturn costs and profits of 200 contracts which have now completed.

For contracts that became QDCs/QSCs in 2024/25, the estimated total contract price of those QDCs/QSCs was £13.5 billion, and the total is £124.6 billion for all QDCs/QSCs across all years.

Trends and changes
- In 2024/25, 21 contracts became QSCs, which is the highest number of QSCs entered into in any single financial year to date.
- The total estimated price of contracts that became QDCs/QSCs in 2024/25 was higher than the previous two years (£13.5bn in 2024/25 compared to £5.6bn in 2023/24 and £4.3bn in 2022/23). This is also the highest initial estimated total contract price for any financial year since the start of the regime (contracts in previous years may have been amended, extended or submitted corrected reports, meaning they are now showing higher estimated prices than in their initial year of reporting; see Table 4).
- The mean estimated contract price more than doubled in 2024/25 (£176 million) from that in 2023/24 (£76 million). However, the median estimated contract price in 2024/25 was the lowest figure since the start of the regime (£11 million). The mean estimated contract price has been influenced by a small number of higher price contracts.
- For contracts that became QDCs/QSCs in 2024/25, the average (mean) contract profit rate at the latest time of agreement was 9.78 per cent, a decrease of 0.07 percentage points compared to an average of 9.85 per cent in 2023/24 QDCs/QSCs. The range of estimated profit rates in 2024/25 contracts reported was from 6.2 per cent to 15.1 per cent.
The analysis reflects the most recently reported contract data. All data is taken from reports submitted by the contractor for each QDC/QSC as indicated in the bulletin. The data may not reflect values at contract completion.

The bulletin includes some small changes associated with updates to the data collected under the Single Source Contract Regulations which were amended in April 2024. Please see the methodology section in the bulletin for details of these changes.

Update [24/07/2025]: The SSRO are proposing to discontinue the quarterly series of statistics bulletins. The annual bulletins will continue to be published as usual.

The SSRO welcomes feedback on this proposal, in particular if you can provide any examples of the uses you have for the quarterly statistics that would not be possible with only the annual bulletins. Please email xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx) with your feedback by 15 August 2025. We will consider all feedback and announce our decision shortly after this.

The Q1 2025/26 bulletin was due to be published on 28 August but will be postponed until we have considered stakeholder feedback. Depending on the outcome, we will either publish the delayed Q1 bulletin on our website on 18 September, or announce their discontinuation before this.

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