Fuel and travel costs are pushing prices up again
Thursday 5 November 2026
Inflation has risen to 3.1%, meaning everyday spending is getting more expensive just as household budgets are already under pressure.
Everything the UK's governments and councils spent in 2024-25, from the NHS to street lights, cut into the pennies of a single pound.
View a detailed breakdown of “Everything else”
Look closer
The same money, laid out two ways and grouped two ways. Nothing is added or removed when you switch.
View these figures as a table
What does this tell us?
Most public spending goes on a relatively small number of things
Health, welfare and state pensions account for more than half of the spending shown here.
These include the NHS, financial support for people who need it, and pensions for older people.
Some spending is much smaller than you might expect
Education accounts for around 10p in every pound, while defence and transport receive considerably smaller shares.
Looking at the figures together helps put political debates about public spending into perspective.
Debt interest is a significant expense
Around 11p in every pound goes towards interest on debt.
That's not repaying the loan - it's just interest. And it's more than we spend on culture, the environment, overseas aid and public order and safety, all combined!
It's worth noting, however, that borrowing can fund investments that provide benefits over many years.
Spending decisions involve trade-offs
Increasing spending in one area may require additional revenue, borrowing or changes elsewhere.
But it isn't necessarily a fixed choice between services: economic growth, prevention and more effective spending can also affect what governments can afford.
Why does it matter?
Public spending isn't just a collection of numbers. It determines the services we can rely on, the support available when we need it, and the investments made for the future.
Understanding where the money goes makes it easier to have informed conversations about what our priorities should be.
About these figures
- Source: HM Treasury, How public spending was calculated in your tax summary (updated 4 March 2026), which is based on Table 5.2 of Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2025. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
- The fifteen headings add up to £1,156.2 billion. That is lower than the £1,292 billion headline for total spending in 2024-25, because some spending cannot be assigned to a purpose.
- Pence on the pound bar are rounded so that the blocks add up to exactly £1. The explorer shows one decimal place.
- “Welfare” is the Treasury's name for everything in social protection except the state pension. It includes public sector pensions and social care as well as benefits.
- Official category totals here are built by adding up the Treasury's headings, so they may differ slightly from the published rows for “General public services” and “EU transactions”.
- The short descriptions explain the main activities covered by each spending category. They are simplified summaries based on HM Treasury's classifications and are not exhaustive lists of everything included.
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