UK government 360Giving publication adds 1 millionth grant to GrantNav

By 360Giving team April 2, 2024

On Thursday 21 March 2024, 17 central UK Government departments published their 2022-23 grants data in the 360Giving Data Standard, bringing the total value of grants to over £265bn and over 1 million grants in GrantNav.

360Giving has reached an exciting new milestone with over 1 million grants published using the 360Giving Data Standard! This is all thanks to 275 funders who have joined the open grants movement and contributed to our collective understanding of grantmaking in the UK by publishing their data. Representing over £265 billion worth of funding, all the grants can be explored in our tools GrantNav and 360Insights.

This milestone was reached following the recent publication of the UK central government grants data for 2022-23.

About the UK central government data

The new data collated and published by the Cabinet Office’s Government Grants Management Function (GGMF) covers 62,926 general grants awarded to 29,185 recipients, with a total value of £42.5bn. These grants were either newly awarded for 2022 to 2023 or grants from previous years with instalments in 2022-23.

This now brings the number of grants published by the UK government to over 340,000, worth a total of £218 billion. This data is now available to explore in GrantNav, via this filtered search or can be visualised in 360Insights.

Which departments have published grants?

A total of 17 departments have published 360Giving grants data, including HM Treasury and the National Archives who both published grants for the first time. As the grant data is for the 2022-23 period, it reflects the department names and structures that existed at the time. The ‘machinery of government’ changes in 2023 to 2024 which saw the creation of four new departments will not show in the data until the next publication scheduled for March 2024.

Department Name	No of grants	No of recipient organisations	Total awarded (£m)
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy	26,713	6,008	£22,817.9
Department for Work and Pensions	11,235	9,956	£1,413.2
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs	8,770	5,245	£800.2
Department for Education	4,269	3,606	£3,008.0
Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities	4,248	1,168	£7,133.0
Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport	3,349	2,645	£1,144.0
Home Office	1,660	1,110	£1,618.8
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office	805	313	£2,423.4
Department for Transport	693	293	£1,896.2
Ministry of Justice	359	234	£122.9
Ministry of Defence	348	301	£13.9
Department of Health and Social Care	276	251	£127.7
Department for International Trade	119	119	£3.9
Cabinet Office	36	31	£5.4
The National Archives	32	32	£0.5
HM Revenue & Customs	12	12	£1.7
HM Treasury	2	2	£1.1
Total	62,926	29,185	£42,531.9

What type of organisations are receiving government grants?

360Giving data on grants awarded to organisations includes a name and unique organisation identifier for each recipient. When this organisation identifier uses an official reference, such as a charity or company number, it is possible to see what type of organisation received the grant.

While there are over 21k grants awarded to organisations where the type is unknown, it is possible to break down the rest of the data between Educational Institutions, Companies and Charities. The largest proportion of funding went to registered companies, who were 57% of all recipients and received 47% of the grants and 54% of the total value. Registered charities received the smallest proportion of the funding, representing 4% of the recipients and receiving 1.3% of the total funding.

You can see a more detailed breakdown of the types of organisation receiving funding from government grants by looking at the Recipient organisation type chart in 360Insights.

Organisation type	No of recipients	Total awarded (£m)	No of grants
Registered Company (including Community Interest Company)	16,578	£23,106.6	29,875
Unknown	7,731	£15,849.0	21,477
School/Education/Learning provider	3,807	£3,002.8	9,442
Registered Charity	1,069	£573.4	2,132
Total	29,185	£42,531.9	62,926

Further information about the government data

In the government grants data, ‘Award Date’ refers to when the grant was originally awarded and ‘Amount Awarded’ refers to the single-year value for the grant period. This means multi-year grants will appear as separate grants in each year a payment was made. The majority of grants have a date which falls in the year they were awarded (often using the first day of the financial year, e.g. 1 April 2022) however, there are grants appearing in the data as far back as July 1998. This is because, while they were first awarded in a previous year, they still have payments in the 2022-23 year.

The grants published by departments that appear in GrantNav are called ‘general grants’ – defined as being given for a particular purpose and include grants awarded to organisations only. These general grants account for 30% of government grant spending in 2022-23. The other 70% are known as ‘formula grants’ which is a type of funding distributed to certain types of recipient, such as local authorities and schools, with the amounts calculated using a formula.

Further explanation and statistics about government grantmaking for 2022-23 (and previous years) can be accessed alongside the full grants data file on GOV.UK website.

See the data in context with UKGrantmaking

This data will be included in 360Giving’s analysis which will be presented in the UKGrantmaking project, announced last year. The new platform will allow you to see the UK government grants data for charitable purposes alongside 2022-23 grantmaking data from across funding sectors, putting it into context with deep dives and insights from our partners. Keep an eye out for the launch of UKGrantmaking this June!