Outgoings
Where British money goes, and what the state can’t see.
Every year billions of pounds leave Britain: some as public spending, some lost to fraud, and much more as private money sent home by people who earn it here. This project sets out what is actually counted, what is estimated, and how much nobody counts at all.
The flows
Width is proportional to money per year. Solid figures are measured; outlined ones are estimates; dashed rows are things nobody measures. Select any row for the figure, the year and the source.
The figures come from different years and are not a single official total; they show scale. Dollar figures are converted at $1.32 to the pound, the 2025 average of the Bank of England’s daily rates.
Where it goes
Every destination we can put a figure to, for each kind of money. Choose a type to see its own map; select a country or circle for its breakdown and sources.
Circle area is proportional to the money (the smallest are enlarged so they stay visible); lines are drawn for the forty largest destinations to show direction. In “All money”, each takes the colour of its largest component. Most remittance figures are modelled estimates from the Center for Global Development, which puts Britain’s total at about £33bn in 2024, against £9.3bn in the World Bank’s balance-of-payments data; Bangladesh, Pakistan and India are shown at their own, higher, recorded figures. State Pension is DWP outturn for 2024-25, aid 2024, healthcare 2023-24, child benefit 2019.
Student loans
Not a yearly flow out of the country, but a debt owed from abroad that is partly never collected, and a loan system that has been open to abuse at home. Whatever is not repaid is paid for by British taxpayers, in a system whose terms British graduates have already been asked to make tougher.
Who pays when a loan isn’t repaid
Student loans are written off 40 years after repayment is due to start, and the Treasury absorbs whatever is left. The Department for Education expects 33p of every £1 lent to full-time students on the current loan plan this year never to come back. That is roughly £5.2bn of the £15.6bn lent to them in 2025-26.
£21.4bn new lending × 73% Plan 5 full-time = £15.6bn; × 33% expected subsidy = £5.2bnTo cut that cost, the 2022 reforms lowered the repayment threshold to £25,000 and stretched repayment from 30 to 40 years for everyone starting since 2023. The Office for Budget Responsibility said affected borrowers would “pay a higher rate of income tax for their entire working lives”. Debt that walks out of the country, or was lent on a course nobody attended, is a cost to the same system.
Of the 21,380 students flagged on weekend-only courses, 3,260 were British. Students on these courses were told that maintenance support already paid to them was an overpayment. Ministers later said it would be recovered through normal repayments rather than at once. Lead universities can keep up to 30% of tuition fees from franchised courses, according to MPs on the Public Accounts Committee, so not every pound lent reaches teaching.
How much of each £1 lent won’t come back
Department for Education forecast for full-time loans issued in 2025-26.
When the 2022 reforms were costed, the OBR expected the share written off to fall from 57% to 37% by 2026-27. Source: DfE, Student loan forecasts for England 2025-26; OBR.
Who was on the weekend courses
21,380 students flagged by the Student Loans Company in its blocked-payment exercise, by nationality.
90.6% were 25 or older, 90.3% reported household income under £25,000, and 99.2% asked for the maximum or near-maximum maintenance loan. The Student Loans Company says the payments arose because providers wrongly classed weekend courses as attendance-based; the data does not by itself establish fraud. Source: SLC freedom-of-information response, analysed by Wonkhe, August 2026.
How the abuse came to light
- 2022-23
The Student Loans Company challenges 3,563 suspicious applications at ten providers, linked to £59.8m of funding. One university withdraws most of the 1,389 students at a franchised partner after investigating academic misconduct.
- Jan 2024
The National Audit Office finds £4.1m of detected fraud in 2022-23, over half at franchised providers that teach under 5% of students, some of it potentially linked to organised crime.
- Apr 2024
MPs on the Public Accounts Committee call franchising a “back door into the student loan system for organised fraudsters”.
- Mar 2025
A Sunday Times investigation alleges thousands of enrolments with no academic intent and organised recruitment through social media. The Education Secretary calls in the Public Sector Fraud Authority.
- Apr 2025
Oxford Business College loses access to student finance for new students over recruitment and attendance concerns; the college denies wrongdoing and goes to court.
- Dec 2025
Ministers confirm that franchised providers with 300 or more students must register with the regulator, from 2028-29, and remind universities that weekend-only courses do not qualify for maintenance loans.
- Mar 2026
The Student Loans Company is told to stop weekend-only maintenance payments: about £190m paid to around 22,000 students at some 15 providers in 2025-26.
- Apr 2026
Ministers defer recovery to normal repayments and pause recovery of grants until at least September.
Detected, proven fraud remains small, at £4.1m in 2022-23. The large sums sit in a grey zone of misclassified courses, weak attendance checks and an agent-driven recruitment market. Sources: NAO; Public Accounts Committee; The Sunday Times via LBC and Times Higher Education; Wonkhe; FE Week; PoliticsHome; SLC letter to the Education Committee, May 2026.
What the state doesn’t know
Questions about money leaving Britain, and what ministers and officials have said in the past year.
Coming next
Sections being added to this project.
Writing from this project
Data and method
Every figure on this page, with its calculation and source.
- Figures come from different years, between 2019 and 2026, and are not a single official total. Each is labelled with its year and whether it is measured, estimated or out of date.
- Dollar figures are converted at $1.32 to the pound, the 2025 average of the Bank of England’s daily rates.
- Remittances to Bangladesh, Pakistan and India use those countries’ own figures. Everywhere else uses the Center for Global Development’s 2024 model, which shares out each country’s recorded receipts according to where its emigrants live. It is an estimate, and it gives a far higher total for Britain than the World Bank’s balance-of-payments data.
- State Pension and other benefits paid abroad are DWP outturn for 2024-25. Aid by country is the FCDO’s final figures for 2024; healthcare is 2023-24; child benefit is 2019, the last year HMRC published it.
- Student loans owed from abroad are a debt, not a yearly flow, so they are not added to the totals.
Outgoings is a deKilpeck project by Harry Pye. Corrections and new data are welcome: harry.pye@dekilpeck.co.uk.