ALB Landscape Analysis 2023

The ALB Landscape Analysis is a continuation of the Public Bodies Directory, an annual publication which provides transparency into the Arm’s Length Bodies of the UK Government.
Keywords

ALBs, Arms Length Bodies, Public Bodies, Quangos, Public Bodies Directory, Civil Servants, Public Servants

At a glance

In 2022/23 there were:

304 ALBs

There were

246 NDPBs

38 Executive Agencies,

and 20 Non-Ministerial Depts.

ALBs employed

390,808 staff (FTE)

The UK Government budgeted

£353.3 Bn for ALBs

ALBs delivered

£236.01 Bn

in Grants-in-Aid to fund the operations of other organisations

NHS England, the largest ALB, received

£159.3 Bn

in Government funding

Arm’s Length Bodies

Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs) are public bodies which have received an administrative classification by the Cabinet Office. Public bodies are a wide range of organisations, such as local authorities, the police, the armed forces, and government bodies, which provide public services on behalf of the UK Government.

This publication provides a high-level analysis of the staffing, budget and expenditure of the UK government’s ALBs in the 2022/23 financial year. You can also explore the underlying data on ALBs in more detail by visiting our ALB Data Explorer tool. It does not cover Public Corporations, such as the BBC, local government bodies, devolved administrations or parliamentary bodies.

The main classifications of ALB recognised by the Cabinet Office are:

  • Executive agencies (EA)

  • Non-departmental public bodies (NDPB)

  • Non-ministerial departments (NMD)

You can read about these classifications in more detail in our About section.

Number of ALBs in 2022/23

There were 304 administratively classified UK government Arm’s Length Bodies in 2022/23. Of those, 246 were NDPBs, 38 were EAs and 20 were NMDs. Within the NDPB classification, the majority of these were either Advisory NDPBs (116) or Executive NDPBs (118).

A stacked bar chart showing the total number of ALBs sponsored by the UK Government during the 2022/23 Financial Year on the Y-axis. The bar is coloured by the classification of each ALB to show how they are proportionally represented. The largest 2 sections of the bar chart represent Executive NDPBs (118 ALBs), and Advisory NDPBs (117 ALBs). The smallest section represents Crown NDPBs (4 ALBs). The chart is annotated to show that Executive NDPBs are the 2nd largest group of ALBs in the landscape, yet receive the majority of all direct Government funding.


The number of ALBs does not tell the whole story

Executive NDPBs were the largest classification group in 2022/23, comprising 39% of ALBs. Executive NDPBs spent 61.8% of total ALB spending and employed 37.9% of all staff employed by ALBs in 2022/23. In contrast, Advisory NDPBs comprised 38% of ALBs, but contributed to only 0.005% of total ALB spending and 0.04% of all staff employed by ALBs in 2022/23.


The ALB landscape is skewed towards 10 large ALBs

While there were 304 ALBs in 2022/23, the way that ALBs are funded varies considerably across the landscape. The UK Government allocated £353.3 billion to ALBs, yet the 10 largest ALBs within the landscape received the vast majority of this funding, £326.29 billion, representing 92.4%. Due to the vast differences in the scale of ALBs budgets, they can only be viewed together on a logarithmic scale, as presented below, and care should be taken when interpreting this graph. More details of these ALBs can be found in the High Profile ALBs section.


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