Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom
British Government Departments
The Government of the United Kingdom is divided into departments that each have responsibility, according to the government, for putting government policy into practice. There are currently 24 ministerial departments, 20 non-ministerial departments, and 422 agencies and other public bodies, for a total of 465 departments.
Ministerial departments
Ministerial departments are generally the most high-profile government departments and differ from the other two types of government departments in that they include ministers. A list of all ministerial departments is shown below.
Non-ministerial departments
Non-ministerial government departments are headed by civil servants and usually have a regulatory or inspection function. A list of all non-ministerial departments is below.
“Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom” enters the record as british Government Departments. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Departments, Government and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Departments, Government and United provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2500378. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom primary sources, Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom archive and Departments research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.