ALB, Arm’s Length Bodies, Public Bodies, Quangos, Public Servants, Civil Servants
In 2023/24 ALBs were allocated
£369.78 Bn
from the UK government
Government funding for ALBs increased from
£353.3 Bn in 2022/23
an increase of £16.49 Bn
NHS England received
£175 Bn
in government funding during 2023/24
ALBs also generated
£22.15 Bn
in income from levies, fees, cost recovery functions, and commercial
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
In most cases, HM Treasury funds ALBs by allocating money to ministerial departments who then delegate it to their ALBs; the department that funds an ALB is known as its sponsoring department. Non-ministerial departments, such as the Food Standards Agency, are an exception to this, and are typically funded directly from Parliament to ensure they can operate with independence. As a result, Non-Ministerial Departments often negotiate their funding directly with HM Treasury1, and some Non-Ministerial Departments even sponsor their own 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 2023/24.
In 2023/24 ALBs received £369.78 Bn in funding from the UK government. This marks an increase of £16.49 Bn (4.67%) since 2022/23, when ALBs received £353.3 Bn. For additional context, the total expenditure for the UK government in 2022/23 was £1,133.6 billion, meaning funding for ALBs represents around a third of all public expenditure.
The 10 largest ALBs within the landscape received the vast majority of all government funding for ALBs in 2023/24, £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
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.
The figure below segments groups of ALBs into clusters, each with a different workforce size and government funding. The three clusters containing the greatest number of ALBs are as follows:
Clusters with the fewest ALBs were:
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
From a total of 306 ALBs in 2023/24, 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).
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
While ALBs collectively received around £369.78 Bn in government funding, the vast majority of this funding (£335.58 Bn) went to ALBs sponsored by just 5 departments, representing 90.8% of all government funding.
The departments sponsoring the ALBs which received the most funding were: Department of Health and Social Care (£177.87 Bn); Department for Education (£74.65 Bn); HM Revenue and Customs (£41.07 Bn); Department for Transport (£30.72 Bn); Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (£11.27 Bn). As a Non-ministerial department, HMRC operates as its own sponsor, whilst also sponsoring the Valuation Office Agency.
Circles represent funding for individual ALBs, bars represent total funding for ALBs under sponsor.
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
ALBs provide many different types of public services, yet the majority of funding for ALBs goes to the following types of bodies: Grant and subsidy issuing body (£258.52 Bn); Major programmes and delivery organisation (£102.55 Bn); Safety, licensing and regulation body (£2.75 Bn).
Collectively, these types of bodies received £363.82 Bn in government funding, representing 98.4% of all government funding for ALBs (£369.78 Bn) in 2023/24.
Many of these ALBs, such as HMRC and Network Rail, deliver public-facing front-line services, requiring more funding than other ALBs.
Circles represent funding for individual ALBs, bars represent total funding for ALBs by purpose group.
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
In 2023/24 306 ALBs collectively received £369.78 Bn in government funding.The 10 largest ALBs received £339.8 Bn, representing 91.9% of the total government funding.
Many of these ALBs deliver vital front-line public services, requiring large amounts of government funding. These ALBs are: NHS England (£175 Bn); Education and Skills Funding Agency (£72.37 Bn); HM Revenue & Customs (£40.76 Bn); Network Rail (£17.64 Bn); UK Research and Innovation (£10.27 Bn); High Speed Two (HS2) Limited (£7.28 Bn); HM Prison and Probation Service (£5.56 Bn); National Highways (£5.01 Bn); Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (£3.01 Bn); Homes England (£2.91 Bn).
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
In 2023/24 306 ALBs collectively generated an additional £22.15 Bn from non-direct government funding sources such as levies, fees, commercial activities, and cost recovery functions. Out of 306 there were 110 who generated more than 50% of their income from these sources. Many of which were funded entirely by these sources of income.
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Only includes data for ALBs which reported government funding in both 2022/23 and 2023/24.
Excludes any ALBs with a change in funding that is greater than 150% or less than 150%, which is indicative of data quality issues.
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
Cabinet Office | ALB Landscape Analysis 2023-24
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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.↩︎