How UK aid is spent

Review

This review finds that UK aid is being spent in an increasingly challenging global context, with extreme poverty concentrated in places severely affected by conflict and climate change. It notes that major trade-offs will continue in the current challenging economic and geopolitical climate, as the government sets strategic priorities and makes choices about how much, where and how to allocate resources in 2025 and beyond.

Findings

Global context:

• The Sustainable Development Goals are significantly off-track
• International climate finance falls significantly short of developing country needs
• Rising conflict is placing heavy strain on the international humanitarian system
• Global finance is now flowing away from developing countries

UK development funding landscape:

• The UK development budget has seen dramatic reductions since 2020
• A substantial share of UK development funding is currently spent within the UK
• Allocations to longstanding UK country partners have been significantly reduced
• The UK delivers most of its bilateral aid through UK or international partners
• The UK’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises has been reduced
• The UK has held to its £11.6 billion international climate finance target
• UK multilateral aid has remained relatively stable through the budget reductions
• Apart from in-donor refugee costs, other government departments now spend less development funding
• The UK has expanded its use of non‑grant instruments

(This report was updated on 13 March 2025. The subtitle for Figure 8 was corrected.)