The Home Office plans to renew its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud hosting at a potential cost of £881.6m over two years – nearly three times the annual rate of the £450m three-year deal it replaces.
The UK public sector is a major buyer of hyperscale cloud. The department’s notice, published on 30 October 2026 through the government’s Find a Tender service, sets an estimated budget of £881,621,007 excluding VAT, or about £1.1bn including VAT, for a contract that will run from December 2027 to December 2029.
A separate market-engagement notice covers the same procurement, with a formal contract notice expected in January 2027.
The £881.6m deal replaces the £450m contract AWS won in 2023, which had a three-year duration.
Because the Home Office packs a larger sum into a shorter term this time around, the implied annual commitment rises from about £150m to approximately £441m.
Transparency data compiled by BidSkim shows recorded Home Office payments to AWS rising from £48.4m in 2020 to £93.5m in 2024, then easing to £81.5m in 2025 and £51.5m in the first seven months of 2026. The total since January 2020 stands at £444.6m across 593 transactions.
Most of the money is booked to the department’s technology function. Spending under Digital Data and Technology (DDaT) totals £361.1m across 474 transactions, with a further £83.4m under COO – Home Office Digital – a switch that appears in the data from September 2025. Recorded payments peaked at £93.5m in 2024 and have not fallen below £81m in a full year since 2023.
The figures carry limits. They capture only transactions of more than £25,000, so they understate the true total, and with the proviso that contract value is a ceiling rather than a spending commitment. Recent annual payments of about £90m sit far below the £441m a year the new notice implies.
The £450m deal drew concerns when it was signed due to the scale of the commitment and the Home Office’s dependence on a single hyperscaler. The renewal extends that dependence for another two years from late 2027, at an annual rate that nearly trebles.
For a department that runs immigration, borders and policing systems on public cloud, exit costs are high and alternatives thin.
Before the January contract notice lands, the Home Office will run a market-engagement exercise. This is the formal chance to establish whether £881.6m is a maximum spend or a genuine expectation, and whether anyone other than AWS stands a realistic chance of winning.
The timing coincides with the current arrangement running towards its end as the department consolidates systems onto cloud, and as ministers press for more sovereign capability in public IT.
A renewal priced at nearly three times the annual rate of the deal that preceded it suggests AWS has become a default.
