An Updated Electronic Quango Dashboard For 2026

About a year ago, I opened a new Google sheet and started to paste in names of the UK government's list of public bodies – which i could scarcely believe. Myself and Dan ("Chris Woodhouse") had become increasingly interested in three AI-based printed circuit board startups, Flux, DeepPCB, and Quilter. The issue was regulation; the endless paperwork required to launch anything serious. It was easier in the US, obviously. where FCC rules allow you to sell limited numbers of devices clearly marked as strictly for testing only.

We mentioned it in passing to Mark ("Oliver Kerr"), who noticed the UK had a regulator for regulators. Down the rabbit hole we went, reading over the Public Bodies Act 2011. Questions arose naturally: how many of these are there? How bad is it? When did any of these begin and from where do they get the authority? The difficulty increased over time because we simply couldn't find information on headcounts, budgets, origins, or any kind of data about these murky NGOs. Half a billion quid on hot air and Sir Humphrey.

It took six weeks of painstaking work to build the full picture, which I published to GitHub for others to use. We found an obscure Word document which accurately listed all Sir Humphrey's friends. Then the natural question emerged: which ones do we get rid of? Quango criticism isn't new: the Taxpayer's Alliance have done extensive, excellent work on it.

It become Project AFUERA: Automatic Firing of Undemocratic Extraneous Regulators and Agencies as a humorous nod to Javier Milei under a domain I registered: quangocracy.org.uk. It was accompanied by the 110-page Restraint of Bureaucratic Overreach Act – a simple project to show we didn't need civil servants of this kind anymore in an era where we can generate complex PCBs in minutes.

If we can do that, we really have no need for DVLA. I'd published an argument about training an English AI mind and was finishing up The Devils' Glossary. It had attracted the attention of a supposed barrister on X who used it to aid his endless passing off, gaining access to the Great British PAC by claiming to be its author. He'd also gained the scrutiny of Hope Not Hate in the process.

Afuera went far and wide. We heard from very senior British politicians who had browsed it. Even they didn't have a list to refer to. Charlotte Gill began using it for a British version of DOGE. We heard from extremely senior civil servants the situation was actually much worse than imagined and it would be a bad idea to consolidate these organisations into "super-quangos." Another contributor employed at DSIT got a stern talking to from the Grey Men of Thames House.

A few weeks later I registered restorationisr.org.uk for similar reasons. Someone actually needed to do analysis like this and academically repudiate this technocratic, anti-intellectual national drift.

25 New Useless Soviet Units

It won't come as any surprise to anyone a Labour government has, in fact, increased the quango portfolio. It's the British state's natural knee-jerk reaction to complexity: appoint more technocrats to do the homework while you indulge in vanity.

What will surprise you is how brazen the stupidity has become.

The "Office for Value for Money" was short-lived, but it was also spectacular. We spent vasts amounts of money to find out how to save money. As Sir Humphrey would say, "months of fruitful work."

The word for "council" in Russian is "soviet."

Let's dive in.

Border Security Command

An administrative fiction created out of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025. It does not explicitly create the Command, but it sets out the role/responsibilities of the Border Security Commander. It's not enough to have Border Force or the Royal Navy to repel a dozen jihadis every day, so we now have the Small Boats command.

Building Control Independent Panel

Another administrative creation as a non-statutory panel chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt following the Grenfell Tower disaster. Something we pay MPs to do. This group writes reports on how the government can take more control of private property, via the premise of "safety." The legal basis? None.

Building Safety Regulator

This one was created by the Building Safety Act 2022 after the Grenfell Tower disaster within the onerous Health & Safety Executive. This pointless soviet doesn't just replace architects and civil engineers who could be sued in court; it helps our politicians appear to be doing something about their grotesque postmodern brutalist tower blocks burning down and killing everyone.

Cambridge Growth Company

Established administratively by central government as a subsidiary of Homes England so the Cambridge Corridor can raise cash. Development boards like this aren't automatically a bad idea, but any time the government decides to get involved in business or venture capital, the end result is the same.

Cyber & Specialist Operations Command

Another administrative fiction created as an internal MoD command structure aiming to consolidate hacking and social media sock puppeting from all three armed services. The military are perfectly capable of organising themselves and far better at it than political departments. The legal basis? None.

Defence Sixth Form College (Welbeck DSFC)

Welbeck College was re-opened in 2005 and closed again in Aug 2021. Its raison d'etre was educating young men who wanted to go into the engineering departments of the armed services. Ostensibly a very sensible institution, it seems the government have catastrophically mismanaged it. The homepage is a default IIS site. No surprise there, then. The legal basis? None.

Ethics and Integrity Commission

Launched Oct 2025 to replace/rename the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Which is, as anyone in England knows, the most absurdly preposterous notion when it comes to a group of people who treat the idea with contempt almost natively. It barely warrants pointing out the irony.

Government People Function

The Civil Service has fattened so broadly – while you can't pay your bills, millionaires flee en masse, and businesses fold –, it has now created its own HR department for HR. The legal basis? None.

Great British Energy

Everyone knows this disaster created by the Great British Energy Act 2025, aka this Labour government's attempt at creating the NHS for solar panels and windmills: the National Energy Service. One group of people with one sole idea through the ages and no capacity to think of any other. You know what's next: the National Water Service.

Great British Energy – Nuclear

This is a rename of "Great British Nuclear” into a nuclear arm under Great British Energy. It started as British Nuclear Fuels Limited in 1971 until it was chopped up, then brought back again in 2023 as GBN to run pointless tenders for British Rolls-Royce small nuclear reactors the Gordon Brown government had already ordered 15 years before.

Health Equity in Health Protection Initiative

This one really is a candidate for the stupidest yet. It apparently "supports UKHSA’s cross-cutting goal to deliver more equitable health outcomes" by building a "strong foundation of data and evidence relevant to health equity in health protection." Whenever you read this obscurantism in print it's immediately suspicious. Translation: a group of non-jobs writing reports about mask mandates for prisons and condoms for AIDS patients. The legal basis? None.

Independent Football Regulator

Apparently the government believes private sports clubs need oversight by bureaucrats, so it passed the Football Governance Act 2025. This cool-looking techno-referee is a fast-track organisation for turning entire pitches and stadiums into crowds of referees which will inevitably do what they always do – destroy football.

Infected Blood Memorial Committee

A bunch of nine people writing some PowerPoints about where we should establish religious imagery to the 30,000 victims the government injured or killed. Something literally any other group of people could do – MPs, the communities, design agencies. The legal basis? None.

Labour Market Evidence Group

This one is a truly soviet quango-of-quangos, grouping the Industrial Strategy Council, Migration Advisory Committee, Department for Work and Pensions and Skills England. Their goal is to explain to the government how it can stop mass-importing cheap foreign labour for GDP, and employ the locals instead. Good luck with that. The British people haven't had much of it. The legal basis? None.

National Guardian’s Office

The NHS is a cult, and the cultists in it have trouble blowing the whistle. This apparently requires a regulator they can talk to, who also happens to run the thing they're speaking up about. It trains 1000+ "Freedom to Speak Up Guardians" after the government killed 400 people at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital. The legal basis? None.

National Wealth Fund

Angela Rayner renamed the UK Infrastructure Bank and claimed it was like Norway, or something – despite us shutting down our natural wealth with a different quango.

Office for Investment: Financial Services

A public-private "partnership" born out of the Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy, Mansion House July 2025, giving wealthy people who can afford million-dollar lawyers advice on regulation they shouldn't have to deal with in the first place. This is a part of the unnecessary Office of Investment. The legal basis? None.

Office for Responsible Business Conduct

Something to do with the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, "human rights," and a rename of the OECD National Contact Point. NRF says:

The Trade Strategy similarly states that, “[t]o this end” all UK companies should carry out “risk-based human rights and environmental due diligence”. This notably follows the language contained in the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which was adopted in 2024 but is currently under review as part of the EU’s Omnibus Simplification Package (see our previous briefing on the Omnibus here).

The legal basis? Guess what?

Office of the Independent Prevent Commissioner

Another quango-of-quango-of-quango featuring a completely independent left-wing overseer of the Orwellian "Prevent" thought crime regulator, which designates teenagers and grandparents who disagree with mass immigration as harbouring a terrorist ideology. The government has still not yet explained where they derive the authority to do any of this. The legal basis? None.

Office of the Windrush Commissioner

Reverend Clive Foster MBE's being a token "voice" for complaints of racism in exchange for a cosy stipend, about something which happened decades aga we've already forked out for. But at least the MPs don't have to listen to it now they have an address to give out when people ask. The legal basis? None.

Regulatory Innovation Office

It's not enough to regulate the regulators and discover what new regulation is needed. We need to think creatively about new regulation, by merging other regulators (Regulatory Horizons Council and the Regulators' Pioneer Fund). The legal basis? None.

Research England

Giving free money to universities to produce students who deface Churchill statues, suck up to China, call the UK "colonialist," and talk about Lacan's view on gender at dinner parties before escaping to Dubai. Created out of another quango (UKRI) as part of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.

Science and Technology Ethics Advisory Committee

Another rename. It was the Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group, which is something Parliament should be doing. This soviet – unbelievably – consists of immoral people advising other immoral people in government on the ethical implications of science and technology. The legal basis? None.

Like... forced injections, forced mask mandates, and house arrest. One presumes.

Skills England

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc.) Act 2025 abolished the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) and transferred functions to this report-writing waste of cash. They produce PowerPoints and excel sheets on what skills the market needs – which they could pay for, or just ask.

UK Defence Innovation

Possibly a rename; possibly something new. Another takeover of the military's autonomy by the MoD, buying weapons and tech, then investing in the companies it buys from. Its sad little site says it is meant to "accelerate the delivery of cutting-edge innovative capabilities" and the "vision drives everything we do." Huh?

Suggestions for 2027

It gets stupider every year. Which is why we should just eat the frog, jump the shark, and get on with it in true British style. Red flag those async action items and align our initiatives for an interdisciplinary narrative reset of stakeholder goals. Or something.

Next year, may we humbly suggest, in our usual polemic and cynical tone:

• Office for the Total Catastrophic F**king Waste of Taxpayer Money
• Regulation of Regulators Who Regulate the Innovation Of Regulation
• Office for the Study Of Financial Implications of Pothole Repair
• Commissioner for Clap For The NHS
• Committee for Studying What Happens To The Special Relationship When You Unnecessarily Anger The Americans Over and Over Again
• National Humiliation Independent Panel
• Children's Social Media Command
• National Office For Encouraging Chinese Espionage
• Russian Bots Evidence Group
• Great British Nuclear Fusion
• Vaping In Public Commission
• National Black Lesbian Autistic Pangender Dwarf Equity Decolonisation Initiative
• Civil Service Fattening-While-You-Starve Function
• The England You Knew and Loved Memorial Committee

Next week we'll be releasing our dashboard for learning and playing Colonel Blotto in real-time, so we can all figure out how to win FPTP and make this preposterous vanity go away, for good.

While you're pouring over this collection of pointless paper-pushers, have a think hat we could do with an extra £400 billion a year.