National Audit Office: COVID-19 Cost Tracker

The National Audit Office (NAO) has today updated its COVID-19 cost tracker which summarises the government's estimated costs for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic so far. This data now captures a full year of the COVID-19 response.

The cost tracker is an interactive data tool that details government measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Where available, it provides estimated costs for each measure,¹ and details how much has been spent so far.²It will continue to be regularly updated to increase transparency and assist Parliament and the public in scrutinising government spending on the pandemic response.

The NAO finds that at May 2021, the estimated total cost of government's COVID-19 response is £372 billion,³ an increase of over £100 billion since the NAO last reported on the data in January this year. Of this, £172 billion has been reported spent.⁴ Government has also guaranteed loans worth £92 billion during the pandemic, £26 billion of which the government estimates may have to be written off.⁵ This £26 billion is therefore included in the £372 billion total forecast cost.

These estimated costs have been divided into four main categories by the NAO. ‘Support for businesses' has the highest total forecast cost of £151 billion. This includes measures such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme. ‘Support for health and social care' is estimated to cost £97 billion. ‘Support for individuals', such as the Self Employment Income Support Scheme, is forecast to cost a total of £55 billion. ‘Support for other public services and emergency responses' is forecast to cost £65 billion.⁶

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Notes for Editors

1. A cost estimate is an estimate of the gross lifetime cost of a government measure.
2. Spend figures reflect how much has been spent on a measure to date.
3. The data is not audited, it may change should the NAO audit the data in the future.
4. This figure is the amount the NAO knows government has spent on these measures so far, where data are available, rounded to the nearest £1bn, to allow for differences in the accuracy of the underlying costs.
5. This is the estimated write off costs across four schemes: Bounce Back Loan Scheme; Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme; Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme; and Future Fund.
6. The full data set covers support for health and social care; support for other public services and emergency responses; support for individuals; support for businesses; other support; and operational expenditure. These final two categories together amount to £3.5 billion.
7. The data are subject to limitations as outlined in the Limitations of Data tab of the interactive tool.
8. Details of our full programme of COVID-19 work, including published reports and work in progress, can be found here.
9. The NAO is due to update the cost tracker again in Autumn 2021.