Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the amount and proportion of funding provided to arms length bodies through the Blue Planet Fund that was spent on management fees.

By the end of March 2024, approximately £5 million will have been spent on Arms-Length Body (ALB) overhead fees under the Blue Planet Fund’s Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP). This represents 22 percent of their allocated budget to deliver OCPP. The percentage of ALB spend that has been attributed to overhead costs has decreased each year of the programme, and we expect this trend to continue as more in-country partners are onboarded to carry out delivery.