Just how many public governors are there in the UK?

[Spoiler: Nearly half a million, most are school governors]

School governors at work: Photo Credit Steve Bowbrick

Recently I wrote something about public governors, in other words, members of public bodies such as councils, schools, colleges,universities, health trusts and housing associations.

It made me curious about just how many public bodies there are and how many people are members of them. Having been unable to find an accurate survey (if you have one let me know!) here is my attempt to provide some approximate numbers for the UK.

It was a bit harder than I thought it would be. There is no single source and, well, you can see my discussion of sources and assumptions below if you like that sort of thing.

Anyhow, here is my UK estimate:

• 370,000 school governors are members of 29,000 school governing bodies
• 16,400 non executive members of 1,700 housing associations
• 21,000 councillors serving 418 local councils
• 101,600 councillors serving 10,900 community, neighbourhood, parish, village and town councils
• 2,300 non executive members of 507 health trusts / boards
• 8,700 independent and lay members of 547 further and higher education bodies
• 929 Members of the four National Parliaments

In total I make this to be about 520,900 members of 43,076 public bodies

One thing I don’t know is how many of these people are double counted. It would be good to see research on individuals who are members of multiple public bodies — this would be a very interesting group if they exist, particularly those who serve across different sectors. Councillors, for example, are likely to contribute to a number of bodies — this is why I think they are well placed to be ‘mini mayors’ in communities.

Also, this is not a complete list. Police and Crime Panels, Fire and Rescue Authorities, Boards and Councils of various national bodies all spring to mind. Is there a list somewhere? Or maybe we just don’t know?

And, if you want to think ‘not for profit’, rather than just ‘public’, you can add the many trustees of charities.

More people than Cardiff

Let’s assume, based on the rate for school governors, that about 10% of these positions are unfilled. That makes about 468,000 in active service.

That’s way more than the population of Cardiff.

That’s nearly 1% of the adult population, about 1 in 100.

That makes it likely that you know someone who is a public governor. You will almost certainly know someone who knows someone who is.

Mainly school governors

The figures also tell us something about the relative weight of the different sectors when it comes to public governors.

The 520,900 public governors in the UK by sector.

You can see from the chart above that nearly three quarters of members of public bodies in the UK are school governors.

There might be a few ways we can interpret this:

1. If you want to be a public governor your best chance will be with a local school
2. There are too many public governors serving schools, or…
3. There are not enough public governors serving non school sectors

Either way, there is an army of public governors out there in the UK. If you are a public governor there’s no need to feel alone.

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Sources and assumptions

Here is my working out for the figures. It is based on online research and I would welcome any corrections, additions etc. Also note that, where I have rounded, I have always rounded down in the interests of providing a slightly more conservative estimate.

School Governors — many places cite a figure of 300,000 governors for England e.g this report (pdf) of the Education Committee (I’ve also seen it cited as the UK figure). If you know the primary source please let me know! The figure for the number of 24,000 schools in England comes from gov.uk. Welsh Government provide a figure of 23,000 governors at 1,574 schools. In Scotland there are 2,542 schools — I can’t see a figure for governors so have used the Welsh ration of schools/governors to get a rough figure of 37,000. According to this 2011 research report for the NI Assembly there are about 11,000 members of Boards of Governors in Northern Ireland at 1,215 schools.

Housing Associations- The Guardian report a UK figure of 1700 Housing Associations (although the link to the source is broken). There is also a figure of 1,174 in England (excluding those with stock of less than 50) provided by Focal Research (quoted elsewhere as a UK figure) so 1,700 seems right. In the absence of a figure for non executive board members I have taken the average of 11.5 provided by this Grant Thornton report (pdf) and used it to generate a figure of 19,550. The report also suggests that 84% of board members are non executive leaving a total of 16,422 non executive board members — rounded down to 16,400.

Local councils- These figures come from the Local Government Information Unit.

Community, neighbourhood, parish, village and town councils— England figures (9,000/80,000) come from NALC and Wales Figures (735/8,000) from Welsh Government. There is no equivalent in Northern Ireland. Scottish Government give a figure of 1,200 Community Councils in Scotland — as I can’t find a figure for the number of community councillors I’ve estimated this using the same ratio as Wales, so; 13,600 (rounded down). In total, then this comes to 10,900 Councils (rounded down) and 101,600 councillors.

Health — The figure of 2,200 non executives serving on 470 organisations in England comes from wikipedia. There are 21 Boards in Scotland. In Wales there are seven Local Health Boards and three national NHS Trusts. In Northern Ireland there are 6 Health and Social Care Trusts. As I don’t have figures for the number of non executive board members for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland I have used the English figure to provide a ratio and estimated from that hence 37 bodies with 173 members. The UK total is therefore 507 bodies and 2,300 non executive members (rounded down).

Further / Higher Education - There are 166 Higher Education Bodies and 381 Further Education Bodies across the UK making a total of 547. The only figure I can find for the size of these bodies comes from this Association of Colleges Report (pdf)on English FE that suggests 16 so I Have used that to generate a figure of 8,700 non executives (rounded down).