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Committee Material Published 24 Apr 2026 ↗ View on Parliament

There is no single, commonly agreed definition of a small, low-risk central government body. The NAO report classified central government or parliamentary bodies that spent up to £30 million in 2022–23 or had up to 50 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees on 31 March 2023 as small.11 HM Treasury has not endorsed this definition of small bodies and uses different definitions for different purposes. For example, it excluded government bodies with expenditure, income, assets and liabilities of le...

There is no single, commonly agreed definition of a small, low-risk central government body. The NAO report classified central government or parliamentary bodies that spent up to £30 million in 2022–23 or had up to 50 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees on 31 March 2023 as small.11 HM Treasury has not endorsed this definition of small bodies and uses different definitions for different purposes. For example, it excluded government bodies with expenditure, income, assets and liabilities of less than £30 million from the Whole of Government Accounts 2023–24.12 It exempted arm’s-length bodies with up to 500 employees or total operating income a Type: conclusion | Number: 9 | Response status: response_pending