ALB Landscape Analysis 2023/24

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.

Last updated: 2025-06-27 09:40

Author

Public Bodies Team, Cabinet Office

Keywords

ALB, Arm’s Length Bodies, Public Bodies, Quangos, Public Servants, Civil Servants

At a glance

In 2023/24 there were:

306 ALBs

There were

247 NDPBs

39 Executive Agencies,

and 20 Non-Ministerial Depts.

ALBs employed

397,256 staff (FTE)

ALBs also employed

17,059

additional contingent labour staff (FTE)

The UK government budgeted

£369.78 Bn for ALBs

NHS England, the largest ALB, received

£175 Bn

in government funding

ALBs delivered

£267.92 Bn

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

ALBs report that they spent

£1.43 Bn

on contingent labour

ALBs report that they spent

£450.11 M

on consultants

Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24

Data for 2022/23

You can find our previous analysis covering the 2022/23 Financial Year in our 2022/23 Publication.

Outstanding data

There is currently data outstanding for 1 ALB for the 2023/24 Financial Year - Trinity House (Department for Transport).

In 2022/23 this ALB had 298 FTE in staff, received £0 in government funding, and reported £42,377,041 in total managed expenditure. The analysis for 2023/24 does not include imputed values for this ALB, and the final totals in this analysis are likely to change when their data is returned.

Arm’s Length Bodies

Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs) are organisations which have received an administrative classification by the Cabinet Office. ALBs are a subset of Public Bodies, which are a wide range of organisations that play a role in every part of the public sector. ALBs and Public Bodies are often referred to as ‘Quangos’, which stands for ‘Quasi-Autonomous Non-government Organisations’. However, ‘Quango’ is not an official classification used by the UK government. Examples of Public Bodies include: local authorities, the police, the armed forces, NHS trusts, and government bodies. All public bodies provide public services on behalf of the UK government.

This analysis provides a high-level analysis of the staffing, budget and expenditure of the UK government’s ALBs in the 2023/24 financial year. You can also explore the underlying data on ALBs in more detail by visiting our ALB Data Explorer tool.

The primary administrative ALB classifications 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.

Other Classifications

Other types of Public Bodies, such as public corporations (e.g. the BBC), local government bodies, devolved administrations or parliamentary bodies are not covered in this analysis.

What ALBs deliver

ALBs are an essential component of the central UK government, providing a wide array of essential functions on behalf of the British public.

ALBs such as HMRC and Network Rail deliver large-scale public services directly to the general public.
Innovation focussed ALBs, such as Advanced Research and Invention Agency, HS2 and UK Infrastructure Bank, help the government to invest in long-term infrastructure projects.
As advisory bodies, ALBs such as Advisory Committee on Business Appointments and Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food provide expert advice to government departments.
Some ALBs may also act as sectoral regulators, such as Food Standards Agency and Ofgem, and play an important role in promoting the safety and protection of consumers.

The operational independence of ALBs is a critical feature of their design, ensuring that their work is not compromised by the influence of specific sectoral industries, nor disrupted by shifting political priorities.

As ALBs operate at a distance from direct ministerial control, they can often make impartial decisions and provide unbiased guidance. They may also have more control over their own recruitment, allowing them to employ and maintain a workforce of subject matter experts. Collectively, this independence promotes the integrity of ALBs when delivering public services, fostering trust with the wider public.

The current ongoing review of ALBs

All ALBs are currently undergoing a review at the time of publication (May 2025). The review will consider four key principles:

Ministerial policy oversight - if a policy is of national importance then Ministers should have appropriate oversight and control of its development. Major decisions that affect the country and the public should be taken by those elected by the country to do so.
Duplication and Efficiency - government should drive out duplication and inefficiency wherever possible, this includes if there is duplication of policy or delivery work between ALBs and Ministerial departments.
Stakeholder Management - the fact that government needs to engage stakeholders should not be a reason for an ALB to exist, government itself should be working hard to engage with a variety of partners at every stage.
Independent Advice - where there is a clear justification for independent advice, then this should be conducted at arms length.

For more details see this press release:

Number of ALBs in 2023/24

The UK government had 306 Arm’s Length Bodies in 2023/24. Of those, 247 were NDPBs, 39 were EAs and 20 were NMDs. Within the NDPB classification, the majority of these were either Advisory NDPBs (117) or Executive NDPBs (118).

Plot: Total
Data

Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24

The number of ALBs does not tell the whole story

Executive NDPBs and Advisory NDPBs were the largest classification groups in 2023/24, collectively comprising 76.8% of all ALBs in the Landscape. While Executive NDPBs represented 38.6% of the Landscape, they make up a much more significant portion of the ALB Landscape in terms of budgets and staffing. Executive NDPBs received 62.6% of total ALB funding from the UK government and employed 37.9% of all staff employed by ALBs in 2023/24. In contrast, Advisory NDPBs comprised 38.2 % of ALBs, but received less than 0.01% of total ALB funding and employed only around 0.1% of all staff employed by ALBs in 2023/24.

Plot
Data

Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24

The ALB landscape is skewed towards 10 large ALBs

The way that ALBs are funded varies considerably across the landscape. The UK government allocated £369.78 Bn to ALBs, yet the 10 largest ALBs within the landscape received the vast majority of this funding, £339.8 Bn, representing 91.9%. More details of these ALBs can be found in the High Profile ALBs section.

Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24

About comparing government funding for ALBs on a logarithmic scale

Due to the large differences in the scale of ALBs budgets, they can only be viewed together on a logarithmic scale, as presented above, and care should be taken when interpreting this graph.

ALBs by date of establishment

In 2023/24 there were active 306 ALBs. Of the bodies that were currently active, the most common period they were established within was in the Pre-1979 (72 ALBs) period. In the period between 2010 and 2024 there were 66 organisations established that were either initially ALBs, or later became an ALB during this period.

Years covering each government start from their first full year in power.

Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24

Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24

Dates of ALB establishment

While the above plot shows ALBs by their date of establishment, ALBs did not exist as a formal concept before the 1980s. Many of the ALBs within the Landscape will have existed prior to this period as other types of publicly owned bodies, or in some cases as entities within the private sector. In these cases, the ALB maybe have also operated under a different name. For example, The Office of Rail and Road was established in 2004 as part of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 to succeeded the Rail Regulator, which was established under the Railways Act 1993.

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