United Kingdom in the register

Rules and sources

Disclosure threshold

Parties: > £11,180 central / > £2,230 accounting units since 1 Jan 2024 (previously £7,500 / £1,500); regulated donees > £2,230 (previously £1,500)

Legal framework

Principal statute: Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA) – Part III party accounts, Part IV donations, Part V election spending, Part VII referendums; Representation of the People Act 1983 for candidates. Since 1 January 2024 parties must report by name donations above £11,180 per calendar year from the same donor (£2,230 for accounting units and for each further donation from the same donor); below the threshold donations appear only in aggregate in the annual accounts. Quarterly publication on the Electoral Commission's online register, with weekly reporting in the pre-election period; for Northern Ireland data can be published only for donations received from 1 July 2017. Supervised by the Electoral Commission (London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast).

Currency

GBP, converted to euro at the ECB annual average rate

Sources

• Electoral Commission - Political Finance Online: DonationsThe Electoral Commission · 2001-2026, Great Britain and Northern Ireland registers (NI from 1 July 2017); parties and accounting units, regulated donees (MPs, MSPs, candidates, members associations...), non-party campaigners, referendum permitted participants · 94,208 rows
• Electoral Commission - Statements of accounts (central party)The Electoral Commission · financial years ending 2002-2026 · 7,422 rows
• Electoral Commission - Political Finance Online: Loans and securitiesThe Electoral Commission · loans starting 1987-2026 (pre-2001 loans still outstanding when the register began are included), Great Britain and Northern Ireland registers (NI from 1 July 2017); parties and accounting units, regulated donees, referendum permitted participants · 1,184 rows
• Public funds reported in the EC donations register (derived)The Electoral Commission · 2001-2026 · 379 rows
• UK Parliament Members API (party lookup for donees)UK Parliament · current and former MPs and peers

Caveats

• Donations register includes public funds (Short money, Cranborne money, Policy Development Grants, devolved-assembly funding) reported as donations; these rows have donor kind=public_body and are also summed in the public funding data.
• Rows with 'donation returned/forfeited/deferred' in description were reported but not kept by the recipient; they are kept for completeness.
• Threshold changed over time (£5,000/£1,000 until 2009, £7,500/£1,500 2010-2023, £11,180/£2,230 from 2024); smaller donations are not itemised.
• Northern Ireland donations are only published for donations received from 1 July 2017.
• recipient party for regulated donees (MPs, peers, candidates) is taken from the UK Parliament Members API by name and reflects the person's LATEST party, not necessarily the party at the time of the donation; non-parliamentarian donees (councillors, mayors, MSPs, MEPs...) are mostly unmatched and left empty; ambiguous names are left empty.
• Party branches (accounting units) are named '<party> - <accounting unit>' and attributed to the national party; Scottish/Welsh Labour etc. are accounting units of the GB-wide parties.
• donor country is GB for the Great Britain register (only UK-permissible donors allowed), IE for Irish-source donations in the NI register, else empty; donor_locality is the postcode given by EC for non-individual donors only.
• the party accounts data carries only total income and expenditure of the central party; breakdowns (donations, membership, public funding) exist only in PDF accounts and were not extracted. Values are for the financial year ending in 'year'.
• LOANS: source Electoral Commission - Political Finance Online: Loans and securities (EC Loans register: 1184 rows, GBP 109,743,793, loans and securities reported by parties, accounting units, regulated donees and referendum campaigns) are credit transactions, NOT donations. The amount is the loan principal at its start date; repayments are not deducted (see description: repaid / converted / outstanding). Commercial bank and building-society loans (Co-operative Bank, AIB, RBS, Unity Trust...) are flagged 'commercial lender' in description; 'Authorised Participant Security' rows (19) are guarantees given for someone else's loan, flagged as such. Loan amounts converted into donations (see description) may also be reported in the donations register (Electoral Commission - Political Finance Online: Donations), so summing both sources double counts the converted part. Exclude source key Electoral Commission - Political Finance Online: Loans and securities from donation totals if you want donations only.
• Campaign spending (EC Spending search) is not included: it names suppliers, not donors.
• SECOND-PASS STATUS (2026-09-29): the EC register above is complete, but other official GB sources that name donors are NOT ingested yet, so status is 'partial'. Identified and verified: (1) House of Commons Register of Members' Financial Interests, Category 2 'Donations and other support for activities as an MP': 4,409 named donors, GBP 29.6m, registered 2022-2026, from the official API (https://interests-api.parliament.uk, Open Parliament Licence; about half overlap EC rows for MPs and constituency parties; the rest are donations below the EC thresholds and in-kind support); (2) Register of All-Party Parliamentary Groups (named funders with amounts or GBP 1,500 bands, editions 2015-2026, only reachable via the Wayback Machine because publications.parliament.uk sits behind a Cloudflare challenge); (3) devolved registers: Northern Ireland Assembly open-data API (http://data.niassembly.gov.uk/api/register, 38 donation entries 2022-2026), Scottish Parliament annual register PDFs 2016-2026 (donations and leadership-campaign gifts in free text), Senedd register PDFs; (4) House of Lords register Category 4 Sponsorship (about 120 entries, funded staff mostly without amounts, 3 entries with amounts). Details and commands: RESUME.md.
• CHECKED, NOTHING PUBLISHED: (a) candidate spending and donation returns at UK Parliamentary general elections (2015, 2017, 2019, 2024): the Electoral Commission publishes only per-candidate totals centrally; individual donors are inspectable only at local authorities (EC pages https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/political-registration-and-regulation/financial-reporting/campaign-spending-candidates and https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/media-centre/general-election-candidate-spending-and-donation-data-published; these pages sit behind a Cloudflare challenge and were not opened, the statement is taken from the EC text shown in search results); (b) donations and loans to Northern Ireland parties before 1 July 2017 are confidential by law (Transparency of Donations and Loans etc. (Northern Ireland Political Parties) Order 2018, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2018/9780111162019/note); (c) local-election candidate returns are lodged with each local authority, no central publication found; (d) referendum campaigns (EU 2016, Scottish independence 2014, AV 2011, North East England 2004) are already inside Electoral Commission - Political Finance Online: Donations as Permitted Participants (1,026 rows); the 2011 Wales referendum has no participant with reportable donations in the register; (e) leadership-contest donations are already inside Electoral Commission - Political Finance Online: Donations (745 'Leadership Candidate' rows plus MPs' rows).