How many new QUANGOs have been created?
In seeing comments on the following YouTube video from Prof. Tim Wilson, I decided to collect the information requested --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec6PDdKLbUMHowever, in this day and age YouTube's auto-censor is so strong it will not allow basic discourse.
Not that I believe YouTube was ever intended to be a place for proper discussion reserved historically to forums and chaired debates, however, in the computer hardware community long form and well formulated responses in comments do not seem to have quite the same problem.
Thankfully this is largely a matter of public record if you put in the effort to search and research.
Problem is that dozens have gone through renaming, some a rebranding'and change in responsibilities by amalgamating or unfortunately duplicating an existing function.
I have managed to collect basic information from 4 sources:
- 2 news organisations -- Partial information
- 1 public institute The ICAWE -- Partial overview -- and
- 1 government website with historic snapshot from WebArchive.
... See the sources section at the end of this article
The simplest departmental overview breakdown I have found in source (4) shows the delta from 2020 to 2025 which is imperfect, but approximately:
- a) +26 High Profile groups
- b) +7 Public Organisations
- c) +16 Public Agencies + Bodies
- d) -1 Ministerial Departments
Net 'growth' in headline figure: +48 comparing 2020 to 2025
Now, of course this is not
*all* Labour's doing given the Conservatives presided over-bloating the state for 15 years to zero public good, revolving doors and impotent leadership with non-existent execution due to Civil Service + institutions being politically plus ideologically captured -- But I digress.
List of new departments and organisations
However, the ones which I can attribute are approximately 30 enumerated below, to the best of my ability did not exist before 2024
*excluding* purely renamed bodies (you have to triple check the lists and what their responsibilities are):
1. Fair Work Agency
2. Independent Football Regulator
3. Jet Zero Taskforce
4. Great British Energy
5. Mission Control
6. National Energy System Operator
7. Solar Taskforce
8. Global Clean Power Alliance
9. Child Poverty Taskforce
10. New Towns Taskforce
11. Border Security Command
12. Regulatory Innovation Office
13. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
14. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
15. Centre for Climate and Health Security
16. National Protective Security Authority moved out of
17. National Space Operations Centre
18. Office for Digital Identities and Attributes
19. Split out of Policy Profession body from Open Innovation Team
20. PackUK
21. UK Resilience Academy
22. Government Debt Management Function
23. Immigration Advice Authority
24. Women and Equalities Unit -- Looks to be a rebrand + new creation
25. Independent Water Commission
26. Industrial Strategy Advisory Council
27. Mining Remediation Authority
28. Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
29. Regulatory Horizons Council
30. Infected Blood Compensation Authority
First 14 were directly from 2 cited news sources (1), (2) & (3).
Items 15 - 24 by manual review of the differences between the Gov.UK site (5) vs (5.a)
Items 25 - 30 with aid of parsing (5) and (5.a) and manually checked each entry.
Merger of many departments and renamings would require tracking the pages and announcements more closely.
Some of these are highlighted the ICAEW (4) if you read carefully enough to decipher the examples of government departments from the changes, denoted by the paragraphs stating the date range at which the changes occurred since it provides a historical 10 year view from 2015 to present day (at time of writing) 2025.
Therefore only a handful can be derived from this source which is not extensively listing.
Thus the rest had to be derived from taking a historical listing, carefully comparing names and checking their page descriptions to ensure those removed and newly added are not simply direct renamings.
The simplest metric is to check if the newly created pages have any associated documents or news prior to 2024, many of which being only set up around August 2024.
How can we better summarise the changes? Are any of these structural? Where is the accountability?
Several of these initiatives do not have a specific government body name in the Gov.UK site, hence, this list is an amalgamation of all sources to determine the total outlay.
Many of the news summaries over generalised with the same words:
'Others appear to be replacing or duplicating functions that already exist' without proper citation, and, to be fair to properly enumerate and attribute them would have taken a few A4 pages in fairness which the average reader in 2025 is not particularly interested in.
In my opinion it would need to be a metro map of origin on a double spread broadsheet to properly see.
The main issue and concern is that of accountability and effectiveness, the number of departments and organisations can be an indicator of fragmentation that hinders ability to act and seek approval.
However at the same time allocating specific staff to pressing issues with the ability to direct and act is often an effective strategy. Often the titles such as 'Taskforce' are used in the same sense as a Police force might and evoke that impression to the public, however, this only works if there is oversight, resources required are being provided not squandered, and no overreach nor miss application/abuse of the law is taking place.
Sources
News sources:
Analysis:
Government Pages