Contract award
Oxfordshire awards Bicester link road design without competition
By Staff Writer | 05-09-2026
Oxfordshire County Council has placed the design work for the A4095 North West Bicester Strategic Link Road with Perfect Circle JV Ltd at 1,184,030.87 pounds excluding value added tax. The procurement method on the record is direct, below threshold and without competition. The contract was signed on 1 July 2026 and the contract details notice was published at 8:32pm on 4 September 2026.
What the commission covers
Preliminary design of the A4095 Strategic Link Road (SLR) including preparation and submission of Planning Application. Detailed design of the section of SLR located to the east of the new junction with Bucknall Road. Feasibility study for modal restriction of Howes Lane east of Shakespeare Drive .
Oxfordshire County Council, contract details notice
Three pieces of work sit inside one commission. The first is preliminary design of the whole link road together with the preparation and submission of the planning application, so the consultant carries the scheme through to the point of consent. The second is detailed design, but only of the length east of the new junction with Bucknall Road, which means the remainder of the route is designed to preliminary level under this contract and no further. The third is a feasibility study on restricting movement along Howes Lane east of Shakespeare Drive.
Detailed design is scoped to one section only. Whoever takes the rest of the route to construction detail is not appointed by this contract.
Awarded without competition
The record states the procurement method as direct and the method detail as below threshold without competition. The award is marked as not above threshold. The classification codes are for a feasibility study, advisory service and analysis, which places the commission in the professional services bracket rather than the works bracket.
The council has not published a justification on this notice. A below threshold award may be placed without competition where the relevant financial limit is not exceeded, and the published value is consistent with that. The notice does not name the rule relied on and none is inferred here.
Value and dates
The contract value is 1,184,030.87 pounds excluding value added tax. The record also carries a gross figure of 1,480,038.59 pounds. That gross is 1.25 times the net rather than 1.2, so the two figures do not stand in the ordinary relationship and no relationship between them is asserted. Only the net figure is published here.
The contract period runs from 1 July 2026 to 29 February 2028, so a little over twenty months, and the signature date is the same as the start date. The notice therefore follows the signature by more than two months. A signed contract document is attached to the record.
The buyer is Oxfordshire County Council, recorded at County Hall, New Road, Oxford. The supplier is recorded at Halford House, Leicester, and is registered as a small or medium sized enterprise.
The notice does not publish the length of the link road, the value of the works it is designing, the programme for the planning application, or when the council expects to procure construction. It does not say why detailed design stops east of the Bucknall Road junction, what the modal restriction on Howes Lane is intended to achieve, or whether the feasibility study will inform a separate traffic order. It gives no start date for construction and no total scheme cost.