HM Treasury · Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2025, chapter 5: expenditure by sub-function
Spending on public sector pensions
£18.3bnmillion
Spending on public sector pensions was £18.3bn in the year ending March 2025, up 1.0% (£177m) from £18.1bn in the year ending March 2024.
▲ 1.0% · +£177m against Year ending March 2024 (previous period)
- HM Treasury count
- Year ending March 2025
- published 17 July 2025
- Table 5.2
- row “of which: public sector pensions”
- column “2024-25”
- cell value 18263
Year ending March 2021 to Year ending March 2025
What this measures
Public sector expenditure on services on public sector pensions, a component of general public services, in cash terms, from HM Treasury's PESA Table 5.2 (UN COFOG classification).
What this doesn’t measure
Spending by any single department or body: PESA classifies by the purpose of spending, not by who spends it.
Important caveat
PESA classifies spending by function using the UN COFOG framework, so "health" is every public body's spending on health services, not the Department of Health's budget, and "defence" follows COFOG rather than the NATO definition. Figures are outturn for the whole public sector including local government and public corporations. Cash figures rise with inflation; the real-terms table restates them at 2024-25 prices with the GDP deflator. Classification changes are footnoted in the table: student loans from 2011-12, Network Rail from 2011-12 and the treatment of EU transactions after 2020. Total managed expenditure includes accounting adjustments that are not allocated to any function.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- HM Treasury
- Publication
- Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2025, chapter 5: expenditure by sub-function
- Release
- PESA 2025, published 17 July 2025
- Source file
- PESA_2025_CP_Chapter_5_tables.xlsx
- File SHA-256
- 81f2f5db1fd0f0f57d7772be55aeec45ae1f02da551b71e6cf1db2f1d17b9207
- Retrieved
- 3 September 2026
- Sheet
- 5_2
- Table
- Table 5.2
- Row
- of which: public sector pensions
- Column
- 2024-25
- Cell value
- 18263
- Geography
- United Kingdom
- Unit
- £ million
- API
- /api/metrics/spend_sub_public_sector_pensions · /series · /vintages
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
- Release
- PESA 2025 · publication page
- Last updated
- 17 July 2025
- Next release expected
- Not yet announced (estimated from the usual cadence)