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.

At a glance

In 2022/23 there were:

305 ALBs

There were

247 NDPBs

38 Executive Agencies,

and 20 Non-Ministerial Depts.

ALBs employed

390,845 staff (FTE)

The UK Government budgeted

£353.3 Bn for ALBs

ALBs delivered

£235.96 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 much wide range of organisations, such as local authorities, the police, the army, and Government bodies, which provide public services on behalf of the UK Government.

This report 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 305 administratively classified UK government Arm’s Length Bodies in 2022/23. Of those, 247 were NDPBs, 38 were EAs and 20 were NMDs. Within the NDPB classification, the majority of these were either Advisory NDPBs (117) or Executive NDPBs (118).

Plot showing the number of ALBs by Classification


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 305 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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