Britain has created at least 15 new arm's-length bodies since 2024, despite repeated pledges from ministers of both parties to shrink the so-called quango state. Policy Exchange, the think tank, publishes the finding in "Mapping the Quangos", the first instalment of a series reviewing every government department's ALBs (arm's-length bodies: state organisations that operate outside direct ministerial control).

The new bodies created since 2024 include the Independent Football Regulator, Great British Energy and Skills England, with several more in the pipeline. The report forms part of Policy Exchange's Project 2029, a programme aiming to set out a plan for the first 100 days after the next General Election that a government of any party could implement.

Why do pledges to cut quangos keep failing?

Andy Burnham, before taking the top job, criticised the "unaccountable state". Kemi Badenoch has called quangos "unaccountable" as well. On Keir Starmer's accession to the premiership, the government promised to cut red tape and reduce the number of ALBs, with the abolition of NHS England as a marquee announcement.

Policy Exchange argues that governments of all parties have failed because they lack a detailed and actionable roadmap. Its report applies a three-part test to each body:

• Is state activity required at all?
• Does the function need genuine independence from ministers?
• Is an ALB the most efficient way to deliver it?

The first instalment covers the ALBs sponsored by the Department for Education (DfE), which sponsors 13 organisations, and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

What does the blob actually cost?

ALBs carry narrow remits, so they face little obligation to weigh the wider costs of their decisions, the report finds. The results include measurable damage to housebuilding and infrastructure:

• Natural England's nutrient neutrality advice has delayed at least 100,000 homes.
• Mitigation measures to satisfy environmental requirements include a £100m bat tunnel on HS2 and £700m of fish-deterrent equipment at Hinkley Point C.
• The Financial Conduct Authority's planned diversity rules were forecast to cost businesses over £300m a year.

Kemi Badenoch, then business secretary, wrote to object to the FCA's diversity rules. The regulator pressed on and only dropped the plans in March 2025, just shy of a year later.

How big is the democratic deficit?

Defending the abolition of NHS England, Wes Streeting argued there is "a reason we have politicians rather than experts as secretaries of state". Elected politicians can be held accountable via the ballot box; the senior leadership of ALBs cannot be voted out.

The Sentencing Council exemplifies the problem, according to the report. In March 2025 it issued guidance creating a presumption in favour of pre-sentence reports for offenders from minority ethnic, cultural or religious backgrounds. Shabana Mahmood, then justice secretary, objected publicly and wrote to the Council twice. It refused to move. Only when she tabled legislation did the Council withdraw the guidance, and the subsequent Act included a ministerial veto.

The asymmetry is stark: an unelected body can change policy by guidance, while an elected government requires primary legislation to override it.

How large has the quango state grown?

Even the official count is disputed. The Cabinet Office counts 307 ALBs, the National Audit Office describes over 400 public bodies, and a parliamentary committee has suggested around 500.

The staffing numbers show consistent expansion. Across six of the largest ALBs covered in the report, headcount rose by a third in the decade between 2014-15 and 2024-25, from roughly 17,300 to 23,000. Every one of these bodies employed more staff at the end of the decade than at the beginning. Combined operating expenditure rose by a quarter in real terms over the same period.

What does the report recommend?

For the DfE, the report recommends abolishing the Children's Commissioner and the School Teachers' Review Body among others, while retaining Ofsted and Ofqual.

For Defra, it proposes breaking up the Environment Agency, which employs more than 13,000 staff, and Natural England. The plan would return policymaking to the department, hand enforcement to a tightly constrained regulator, and consolidate research and funding into a single agency.

Two structural reforms would apply across government:

• 10-year sunset clauses for all new ALBs, forcing periodic review of their existence.
• An end to the practice of ALBs sponsoring other ALBs.

The report concludes that the power of the bureaucratic state continues to expand regardless of the colour of the government, bringing more intervention in the public's daily lives and a rising bill for the taxpayer. A new government of any party, it argues, must have an immediate and directly actionable plan to reduce the reach of the quangocracy and return power to politicians the public can hold to account. The report, its authors say, provides the beginning of that plan.

Byron Evans, a research fellow at Policy Exchange, led the team behind the mapping project.