One of Parliament’s longest-standing functions is considering and authorising the government’s spending plans, requiring the government to obtain parliamentary consent before spending public money. The government’s spending plans are presented to Parliament in documents known as ‘Estimates’. There is a separate Estimate for each government department.

Initial plans (‘Main Estimates’) for the current financial year are usually presented by departments in May, and final revised plans (‘Supplementary Estimates’) are usually presented in February.

The dashboard below shows details of the latest Main Estimates (for 2025/26), published on 15 May 2025. It shows:

  • trends in planned departmental spending, as presented in the Estimates for different years
  • how departmental budgets have changed since the last Supplementary Estimates (for 2024/25)
  • how departments initially plan to allocate their spending within the department

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Notes and sources

Spending control totals

Proposed budgets are divided into separate limits for the following categories:

  • Resource: day-to-day spending (also called ‘current spending’) that includes spending on staff and other running costs, and on goods, services, and grants.
  • Capital: investment spending that covers the purchase and sale of assets, loans and capital grants.

Proposed budgets are further divided into:

  • Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL): spending is subject to fixed limits, based broadly on plans outlined in the most recent Spending Review.
  • Annually Managed Expenditure (AME): less predictable and more demand-led spending, re-forecast each year.

Resource DEL in Estimates is presented including depreciation. The government more commonly uses its preferred measure of ‘Resource DEL excluding depreciation’, for example in Spending Reviews and Budgets.

‘Resource DEL including depreciation’ cannot be added to Capital DEL to calculate Total DEL, whereas ‘Resource DEL excluding depreciation’ can be added to Capital DEL to calculate Total DEL; combined DEL and AME in the Estimate is referred to as ‘total spending’

Estimates memoranda

Government departments are each required to produce an explanatory memorandum to explain the content of each Main Estimate and Supplementary Estimate. Estimates memoranda should compare spending plans with previous years and explain the reasons for any changes that are proposed.

Select committees currently publish Estimates memoranda on their webpages. Details of spending changes are taken from these memoranda.

Government departments and machinery of government

Machinery of government changes in 2023 created three new government departments:

  • Department for Business and Trade
  • Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
  • Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

The three new departments replaced the Department of International Trade and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. There is no historic Estimates data for the new departments, but consistent outturn data has been published (see Sources below).

The Department for Education budgets include the net spending of academies, although funding for academies is not approved through the Estimates.

Sources

Estimates data is from past vintages of the HM Treasury Main Estimates, HM Treasury Supplementary Estimates and departmental Estimates memoranda.

In the Estimates publications:

  • DEL totals and departmental figures are shown in Table 3 and Table 5
  • AME totals are shown in Table 2

Outturn data is from HM Treasury Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2024 (July 2024).

Budgets adjusted to real terms using HM Treasury gross domestic product deflators (March 2025). The deflator for 2020/21 has been smoothed to remove distortions created by the covid-19 pandemic.

Detail of spending changes is taken from departments’ Estimates memoranda. Estimates memoranda will be published on departmental select committee webpages. A collated list of Estimates memoranda will be made available on the House of Commons Financial Scrutiny Unit webpage.

Data updates

A new dashboard will be available for the Supplementary Estimates. Supplementary Estimates 2025/26 are expected in February 2026.

The Main Estimates dashboard will be updated when the next Main Estimates are published. Main Estimates 2026/27 are expected in May 2026.