Thanks to some great work at the Guardian, in their datablog Government Spending by Department 2011-12: get the data it is now easy to see how nearly £700 billion of public money is spent by Central Government Departments.
Here’s an interactive version of their work to explore (available also on the link above):
As the Guardian points out, although the data used to create their visualisation is available in the Annual Report and Accounts from each Department, the way the data is laid out separately for each of the four spending categories means that these need to be summed for every project identified in the accounts. With the Annual Reports published in PDF format, without an accompanying data-friendly format such as CSV, accessing and using the data is more difficult than it should be.
Departmental Spend over £1 billion
Using the data from the Guardian we’ve identified those Departments where spend exceeds £1 billion. In 2011-12, The Department for Work and Pensions tops the list with 25% (£167 billion) of total spend, with the Departments for Health, and Education next in line (£106 billion and £56 billion respectively):
