In 2022/23 ALBs spent
£343.55 Bn
RDEL (running costs)
£270.63 Bn (78.8%)
AME (demand-led spending)
£36.27 Bn (10.6%)
CDEL (investment costs)
£36.64 Bn (10.7%)
ALB Spending
ALB spending: Headlines
ALB spending categories
The total amount of money that an ALB spends is called Total Managed Expenditure (TME). This can be classified as either Annually Managed Expenditure (AME) or within their Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL). AME is demand-led expenditure that is typically hard to budget for in advance, such as pension or welfare claims. Conversely, DEL is typically the body’s main budget, and is used for more predictable spending, such as long-running programmes and projects.1
DEL spend can be further broken down into Resource DEL (RDEL) and Capital DEL (CDEL). RDEL is the cost of running the organisation, which can be on the body’s programmes or the administrative cost for supporting the body. CDEL is expenditure that provides an investment for the body, such as buying property.
The RDEL and CDEL figures in this section are the sums that the body actually spent (known as actual spending outturn), rather than the body’s budget for it, As such, the spending for ALBs reported below may not directly match up with the values reported in ALB Budgets, which captures delegated budgets for 2022/23.
How much do ALBs spend?
Collectively, ALBs spent £343.5 billion in 2022/23. The largest type of spending by ALBs was RDEL Programme spending, which covers ALB running costs, at £263.7billion, representing 76.8% of all ALB expenditure. However, ALB running costs can also include money that is disbursed by the ALB to fund the operations of other organisations as grants-in-aid. In fact grants-in-aid spending represented 68.7% of all ALB expenditure, reflecting the roles of NHS England and Education and Skills Funding Agency, who distribute funding to hospitals and schools. respectively. For additional context, the total expenditure for the UK Government in 2022/23 was £1,133.6 billion, meaning ALBs represent around a third of all public expenditure.
Spending by classification
Executive NDPBs spent £212.31 billion in total, which was 61.8% of all ALB spend. They also spent the most on CDEL (investment spending) at £33.89 billion. On the other hand, although Advisory, Crown and Tribunal NDPBs make up 42.3% of bodies, they together spent only £287.26 million in 2022/23.
NMDs contributed 93.57% to total AME (demand-led spending). Additionally, 79.54% of EAs’ TME was spent as grants, which was the highest proportion out of all classifications.
RDEL spending
In 2022/23 ALBs spent around £270.63 billion on RDEL. RDEL spending represents the day-to-day running costs of an ALB, and typically includes the costs related to an ALB’s staff and their back-office functions which such as HR, Communications, and Finance, which each ALB needs to operate. RDEL is also often used to cover the programme spending of ALBs, which can go towards front-line operations performed by the ALB. For example, while NHS England (£157.63 billion) and Education and Skills Funding Agency (£67.3 billion) collectively spent around 83.1% of all RDEL spending, the vast majority of their spending was RDEL Programme spending, which itself was mostly issued as Grants-in-Aid to towards other organisations to carry out frontline services.
CDEL spending
In 2022/23 ALBs spent around £36.64 billion on CDEL. Ten bodies spent 92.53% of total CDEL spending for ALBs, representing £33.91 billion in 2022/23. These ALBs are organisations which are primarily focussed on investment in infrastructure. For example Network Rail (£5.94 billion) and High Speed 2 (£5.94 billion) are ALBs which develop and maintain public transport infrastructure, and collectively represented 35.1% of all ALBs’ CDEL spending.
AME spending
In 2022/23 ALBs spent around £36.27 billion on Annually Managed Expenditure. Most of this was attributed to HM Revenue and Customs, who spent £33.93 billion as AME, which was 93.55% of all ALBs’ AME spend. HMRC uses AME spending to cover payments for Child Benefits, tax credits and other benefits, reliefs and allowances, which are all susceptible to inflationary pressures. Using AME spending allows HMRC to account for volatile changes in inflation, which may reduce the value of these payments if they were spent under DEL, which is typically allocated years in advance.
Many ALBs reported a negative value for their AME spending, which is often attributable to movements in provisions. Provisions are liabilities of uncertain timing or amount that need to be accounted for in ALBs’ financial statements.
Grants spending
Grants spending captures the money spent by ALBs when issuing money as a Grants-in-Aid to other entities. A Grant-in-Aid is money given by one organisation to another organisation, which is used to support the activities and objectives of the receiving organisation. For example, Education and Skills Funding Agency issues grants to schools and academies as part of the National Funding Formula. In total, ALBs issued more than £236 Bn in grants during 2022/23.
Largest grant distributors
The total amount of Grants-in-Aid distributed by ALBs was primarily driven by 3 ALBs. These were: NHS England (£155.93 billion) Education and Skills Funding Agency (£67.23 billion), and UK Research and Innovation (£8.07 billion). Collectively these 3 ALBs spent £231.23 billion as grants issued, which was around 98% of all grants-in-aid issued by ALBs.
Comparisons with 2020
In the 2019/20 Public Bodies Directory, the Total Managed Expenditure (TME) for ALBs was £292.22 billion. In 2022/23 this had risen to £343.55 billion, representing an increase of around 17.6% (£51.32 billion). Most of this increase in spend is seen in resource (day to day) spending of ALBs. Much like ALB budgets, these increases are primarily attributable to inflation during this time period, and the formal classification of Network Rail as an ALB for 2022/23.
When making comparisons in ALBs’ spending with 2019/20, its important to note that the way AME was measured for 2022/23 differs from 2019/20. In the 2019/20 Public Bodies Directory, ALBs only provided their Resource AME (RAME), whereas for 2022/23 the Cabinet Office collected both RAME and Capitalised AME (CAME) as a single AME value. While this change was made to provide a complete picture of AME spending, CAME spending is relatively uncommon compared to RAME. Analysis by the Institute For Government covering 2021/22 suggests that most Government departments do not use CAME spending. As such, this difference is unlikely to affect the majority of ALBs.
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