The costs of mayoral elections are met by local authorities and are not held centrally, with each authority responsible for managing and retaining its own election cost data. The Government is therefore unable to provide this information.

Our estimate of the additional costs that might arise from second rounds of counting for all mayoral elections in England and Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales over the 10-year period from 2026/27 to 2035/36 is £12.5m, comprising approximately £5.8m for Police and Crime Commissioner elections and £6.7m for mayoral elections. This estimate includes elections for elected local authority mayors, combined authority mayors, combined county authority mayors, the Mayor of London and Police and Crime Commissioners. This estimate does not factor in the Home Office’s plans to abolish the role of Police and Crime Commissioner.

The costs of mayoral elections are met by local authorities and are not held centrally, with each authority responsible for managing and retaining its own election cost data. The Government is therefore unable to provide this information.

Our estimate of the additional costs that might arise from second rounds of counting for all mayoral elections in England and Police and Crime Commissioner elections in England and Wales over the 10-year period from 2026/27 to 2035/36 is £12.5m, comprising approximately £5.8m for Police and Crime Commissioner elections and £6.7m for mayoral elections. This estimate includes elections for elected local authority mayors, combined authority mayors, combined county authority mayors, the Mayor of London and Police and Crime Commissioners. This estimate does not factor in the Home Office’s plans to abolish the role of Police and Crime Commissioner.

Work is underway to develop a multi-year financial profile for the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) following the conclusion of the Spending Review. This is subject to Department-wide business planning process, through which the UKHSA’s Executive Team continue to regularly engage with colleagues in the Department.

The UKHSA total agency budget is £1,793 million.

The requested information is not centrally held, and complying with this request would incur a disproportionate cost to the department.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has no ability to identify the number of fines that are unpaid in the last full year by reference to available digital system reports. Nor could any such report be created and run. Instead, it would be necessary to interrogate court records manually. Accordingly, the information requested could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

In addition to the complexities of the way digital systems operate, assessing payment outcomes over a fixed period is complicated in and of itself. For example, complexities are introduced by later account movements, including account consolidations, Transfer of Fine Orders and write offs. These processes can remove accounts as discrete records or require them to be written off and re raised on different systems, creating a risk of misattribution and double counting. As a result, activity recorded within a given period may relate to fines imposed outside that period, meaning period-based measures of payment rates or balances are inherently unreliable without full account level review.

The Government is exploring ways to make voting in person more efficient, more convenient, and better aligned with the expectations of today’s electors.

Local authorities were invited to submit applications to pilot a range of flexible voting methods at the May 2026 elections in England. We are working with individual local authorities to shape the detail of their flexible voting pilots. We will continue to work with key stakeholders and local authorities throughout development and delivery of the pilots.

We are currently reviewing applications from local authorities wishing to pilot at the May 2026 elections and we will share further details in due course.

The Government is exploring ways to make voting in person more efficient, more convenient, and better aligned with the expectations of today’s electors.

Local authorities were invited to submit applications to pilot a range of flexible voting methods at the May 2026 elections in England. We are working with individual local authorities to shape the detail of their flexible voting pilots. We will continue to work with key stakeholders and local authorities throughout development and delivery of the pilots.

We are currently reviewing applications from local authorities wishing to pilot at the May 2026 elections and we will share further details in due course.

The Government is exploring ways to make voting in person more efficient, more convenient, and better aligned with the expectations of today’s electors.

Local authorities were invited to submit applications to pilot a range of flexible voting methods at the May 2026 elections in England. We are working with individual local authorities to shape the detail of their flexible voting pilots. We will continue to work with key stakeholders and local authorities throughout development and delivery of the pilots.

We are currently reviewing applications from local authorities wishing to pilot at the May 2026 elections and we will share further details in due course.

The Government committed in its manifesto to encourage greater participation in democracy. To support this, the Government is exploring ways to make voting in person more efficient, more convenient, and better aligned with the expectations of today’s electors.

Local authorities were invited to submit applications to pilot a range of flexible voting methods at the May 2026 elections in England, and these are being considered for approval.

The House of Lords Commission agreed in May 2025 to the Administration's recommendation not to increase in real terms its resource budget from 2026-27 for three years, subject to the need to maintain the ability of the House and its Members to carry out their parliamentary duties, and any exceptional external factors. There is no specific staaff headcount reduction target within that.

The operation of Peers' Entrance was met from existing pools of staff. Security officers are allocated to posts flexibly in accordance with the needs of Parliament on any given day. There has been no change to the role of those officers, who continue to be assigned to posts elsewhere on the Parliamentary Estate as required.

Heads of Office in the House of Lords Administration review their staffing and vacancies on a quarterly basis, working with Finance and HR teams to remove any vacant posts that are no longer needed. Vacant posts can be removed as soon as they are no longer needed, and the overall vacancy rate is reguarly monitered by the Lords Management Board anf Finance Committee.

The table below shows the percentage change in the number of staff employed by the House of Lords Administration between 31 March 2020 and 31 March 2025. This provides a snapshot of the number of people employed on these two dates, including any short-term appointments. The overall staff headcount in the Administration increased by 16% between these two dates with increases in eight offices and reductions in five.

Changes in the organisational structures such as teams moving between offices can make office-level comparisons more difficult. Figures are also not available for Parliamentary Knowledge and Information, which was created on 1 April 2024. The Parliamentary Commercial Directorate (PCD) was part of the Finance Office in 2020 and will become a joint department on 1 October 2025; if PCD is excluded from these 2025 figures, the overall increase in staffing since 2020 is 3%.

*The Lord Speaker's Office became a standalone office in 2022.

My letter, dated 7 July 2025, reflected the information presented to me based on the professional judgement and experience of Parliament’s security advisors of the importance of maintaining a flexible security posture. This flexibility has allowed for the temporary reassignment of security staff to the Peers’ Entrance from our existing numbers, at no additional cost to the taxpayer.

Lord Morse’s review into the programme specifications and the cost increases associated with the works at Peers’ Entrance will be reported to the House of Lords Commission on 17 September 2025.

The Home Office is currently considering the requirements around police suspension data, supporting the Government's commitment to strengthen the requirements on forces to suspend police officers under investigation for domestic abuse or sexual offences.

The resources costs associated with the operation of Peers’ Entrance have been met from existing pools of staff and departmental budgets, with no additional cost to the House or to the taxpayer. The average annual cost to Parliament of a front-line security officer is around £46K including salary, pension and national insurance.

The cost of £9.6m for Peers Entrance does include VAT. This sum covers both the design, and the construction works at the Entrance.

In addition, £1,500 in maintenance cost have been incurred for call outs where operator or user error have been the cause.

The Parliamentary Commercial Department will be led by a Chief Commercial Officer. This is a new senior role in the management structure which will be responsible for overseeing Parliament’s portfolio of contracts, developing and implementing commercial strategies, and ensuring high-performance procurement across Parliament. The post was advertised in March with an annual salary of circa £150K, in line with market expectations for a role of this seniority and complexity in the public sector. The outcome of the recruitment process will be announced as soon as possible.

The requested data is not currently collected or held by the Home Office, and could only be obtained for the purposes of answering this question at disproportionate cost.