ALB Budgets

Keywords

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

ALB budgets: Headlines

In 2022/23 ALBs were allocated

£353.3 Bn

from the UK Government

Government funding increased from

£271.91 Bn in 2020

NHS England received

£159.26 Bn

in Government funding during 2022/23

ALBs generated

£9.45 Bn

from levies and fees as a source of other income

ALB funding

In most cases, HM Treasury funds ALBs by allocating money to ministerial departments who then delegated it to their ALBs; the department that funds an ALB is known as its sponsoring department. Non-ministerial departments are an exception to this as they often receive money directly from HMT¹, and may often act as their own sponsor, or even sponsor other ALBs. These delegated budgets are typically set years in advance, and as such may be subject to change. Due to this, the ALB budgets reported below may not directly match up with the values reported in ALB Spending, which captures actual spending outturn for 2022/23.

Government funding for ALBs by departments

The departments which were allocated the most funding for their ALBs from HM Treasury in 2022/23 were Department of Health and Social Care, Department for Education, HM Revenue and Customs, Department for Transport and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Together, they were allocated £322 billion for their ALBs, which was around 91% of all Government funding for ALBs.

ALBs sponsored by Department of Health and Social Care were budgeted £163.21 billion, largely driven by the £159.26 billion allocated to NHS England.

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A lollipop chart showing the total government funding for ALBs under each sponsor department. The chart shows that over 90% of all government funding for ALBs went to organisations sponsored by just 5 departments. This is highlighted by a text annotation and a curved arrow pointing to the top 5 departments. The chart is coloured by whether the department is in the top 5 or not, with red for the top 5 and blue for the rest. The largest bar represents the Department of Health and Social Care, who had the largest budget for their ALBs, largely reflecting the budget of NHS England.

ALBs which receive the most government funding

In 2022/23, total government funding allocated to ALBs was £353.3 billion. The vast majority of this funding went to 3 bodies: NHS England (£159 billion); Education and Skills Funding Agency (£67 billion); HM Revenue and Customs (£45 billion). These bodies deliver key outputs and services on behalf of the UK Government, which is reflected in their large budgets. Collectively, the 10 largest ALBs in terms of Government funding received more than 90% of all government funding for ALBs. More detail on these ALBs can be found in the Largest ALBs section.

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ALBs which generate the most income through levies and fees

In 2022/23 the total budgetted income for ALBs was £362.75 billion. While the majority of funding for ALBs comes directly from the UK Government, some ALBs also generate their own income through levies and fees. All together, ALBs budgeted £9.45 Bn in income generated from levies and fees as a source of other income, representing 2.6% of all income for ALBs. The ALBs who generated the most income from levies and fees were Homes England (£1.08 billion) and Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (£1.06 billion).

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Government funding by classification type

Most of the government funding that was allocated to ALBs by the UK Government in 2022/23 went to NDPBs, which received 62% of the total budget for ALBs. Executive Agencies and Non-Ministerial Departments received less money at 25% and 14% of the total, respectively. The bulk of all direct Government funding for NDPBs (£217.66 billion) was made up by funding for NHS England (£159.26 billion), representing 73% of the total funding for NDPBs.

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A pie chart showing the proportion of government funding for ALBs that goes to each ALB classification type. The chart shows that the majority of government funding for ALBs goes to NDPBs, who received around 62% of all government funding for ALBs. The second largest slice of the pie represents Executive Agencies, who received around 25% of all government funding for ALBs. The smallest slice of the pie represents Non-Ministerial Departments, who received around 14% of all government funding for ALBs. The chart is coloured by classification type, with Executive Agencies in dark blue, NDPBs in dark red, and Non-Ministerial Departments in light blue.

ALBs that receive no direct government funding

From a total of 304 ALBs in 2022/23, around 109 bodies (36%) received no direct funding from the UK Government. Many of these bodies are Advisory and Tribunal NDPBs which operate using shared resources from their sponsoring department, such as the Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain (Department for Transport) and the Police Discipline Appeals Tribunal (Home Office).

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A pie chart showing the proportion of ALBs that receive no direct government funding. The chart shows that around 36% of all ALBs received no direct government funding in 2022/23. The chart is coloured by whether the ALB received funding or not, with dark blue for ALBs that received funding, and light blue for ALBs that did not receive funding, and a small red slice for the few ALBs who did not provide complete data on their funding status for 2022/23.

Comparisons with 2020

In the 2019/20 Public Bodies Directory, the amount of Government funding allocated for ALBs was £271.91 billion. In 2022/23 this had risen to £353.3 billion, representing an increase of around 29.9% (£81.4 billion). While some of this increase is attributable to inflation during this period, it is also linked to the addition of Network Rail as an ALB, who received £19.24 billion in 2022/23. The largest increase in funding went to NHS England, who saw an increase of around £36.46 billion during this time period. However, this increase also reflects NHS England’s merging with Health Education England and NHS Digital, and the dissolution of Public Health England.

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A horizontal grouped bar chart showing the changes in Government funding for ALBs between 2019/20 and 2022/23. The x-axis shows a scale of 0 to £360 billion. The largest 2 bars represent the overall increase in government funding for all ALBs, which increased from £271.9 billion to £353.3 billion in this period. The annotation in the chart flags that the overall increase in Government Funding for ALBs is mainly driven by an increase in the funding for NDPBs. This reflects the size of the budget allocated to NHS England, as well as the formal classification of Network Rail as an ALB in 2021/22, with Network Rail alone receiving around £19.2 billion in 2022/23, having not been represented in 2019/20. The chart is coloured by financial year, with 2019/20 in blue and 2022/23 in red.

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Footnotes

NMDs also have sponsoring departments, which support their services and hold them to account for their actions. In fact, all sponsoring departments do more for ALBs than just give them money, however the exact relationship is different for every ALB.↩︎