Our budget varies from year to year depending on the cycle of elections. Our event budget reflects the costs associated with each year’s elections. This varies significantly year-to-year owing to the cycle of elections, and will change if unscheduled polls are added which need to be delivered effectively. This is presented as a separate budget line to allow for more effective control and scrutiny of our core budget.

Spending on core budgets includes our work supporting voters, electoral administrators, parties and campaigners outside of the cycle of elections, as well as our corporate overheads. Our core budget will be no larger at the end of the period, after inflation, than it was at the beginning (using HM Treasury’s preferred measure for public spending and inflation assumptions where available). While we would always seek to manage our costs within these budgets, increases to the rate of inflation or changes to our work programme to reflect changes outside our control represent the main risks to our spending plans.

Budgets 2022/23 – 2026/27

£ millions 2022/23 2023/24 2024/25 2025/26 2026/27
Core expenditure 14.04 14.06 14.51 15.10 15.22
Event 6.08 4.21 5.52 6.64 4.94
The Elections Bill 5.05 3.23 2.77 2.41 2.53
Operational spending 25.16 21.50 22.79 24.16 22.69
Policy Development Grants 2.00 2.00 2.00 2.00 2.00
Depreciation 1.33 1.46 1.46 1.46 1.45
Provisions 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05
Total Spending plans 28.55 25.01 26.31 27.67 26.20
Capital provisions 0.10 0.10 0.14 0.10 0.10
Capital investments 1.42 0.49 1.63 0.53 0.53

Our capital budgets reflect planned and forecast needs to invest in capitalised IT hardware and software. The levels of capital spending in 2024/25 and 2026/27 represent new or renewed leases for offices in Edinburgh and Cardiff. We remain committed to having continued presence in all parts of the UK, and as we take advantage of increasingly flexible ways of working we will keep our office needs under continuous review. 

Funding

We are jointly funded by the UK Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd. The box below explains more about how that works.

Draft devolved funding shares 2022/23 – 2026/27

  2022/23 2023/24 2024/25 2025/26 2026/27
Budget on finding basis (£m) 22.96 21.80 23.18 24.37 22.93

Scottish Parliament 

£m 1.84 1.52 1.58 2.47 2.81
% 8.01% 6.98% 6.83% 10.13% 12.24%

Senedd

£m 1.42 1.25 1.25 1.65 1.79
% 6.18% 5.74% 5.39% 6.75% 7.80%

UK Parliament

£m 19.70 19.03 20.35 20.25 18.33
% 85.81% 87.27% 87.78% 83.12% 79.96%

Focus on accountability and funding

As part of the devolution of powers relating to elections, the Scotland Act 2016 and Wales Act 2017 made provision for the Commission to become accountable to both those parliaments, as well as remaining accountable to the UK Parliament.

The direct costs of delivering our functions for each parliament are funded by that parliament, with overheads (including depreciation but not capital budgets or provisions) shared according to population. Cost shares can vary due to changes in work programme or electoral cycle.

In Scotland, the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body oversees our funding and corporate accountability, in line with its role regarding other Commissions. In Wales this role is undertaken by the Llywydd’s Committee, and in the UK Parliament by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. Scrutiny and accountability on specific aspects of our work is generally undertaken by specific policy committees, such as the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee of the UK Parliament.

Each year in the autumn we submit an estimate of income and expenditure to the committees, accompanied by our plans for the coming year (or five years when we submit a Corporate Plan). The committees then consider these according to the timetables in each parliament.

The plans, budgets and other information that we submit to the committees are as required by each committee. We will continue to work with the committees, the parliamentary officials and other relevant partners to ensure effective accountability.