Country profile - GBR

Corruption in United Kingdom

12 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 81.9 (2022).

Grand: 72.7 Petty: 89.4 Latest observed: 2019

United Kingdom: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of United Kingdom is Scotland (79.6/100), and the least corrupt is London (85.6/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 12 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, United Kingdom's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 81.9/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Scotland (SCI 79.6/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: London (SCI 85.6/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 72.7/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 89.4/100 (last directly observed in 2019).
  • Trend: United Kingdom's SCI moved from 72.6/100 (1995) to 81.9/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 12 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How United Kingdom compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks United Kingdom into 12 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 81.9 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 73 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 1.6 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 12 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

84 72 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (12)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Scotland GBRr111 1995-2022 79.6
2 Northern Ireland GBRr112 1995-2022 80.1
3 Wales GBRr110 1995-2022 80.1
4 North West [England] GBRr102 1995-2022 80.8
5 Yorkshire and The Humber GBRr103 1995-2022 80.8
6 East of England GBRr106 1995-2022 81.2
7 West Midlands [England] GBRr105 1995-2022 81.9
8 South East [England] GBRr108 1995-2022 83
9 South West [England] GBRr109 1995-2022 83
10 North East [England] GBRr101 1995-2022 83.2
11 East Midlands [England] GBRr104 1995-2022 83.3
12 London GBRr107 1995-2022 85.6

Download United Kingdom

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download GBR.csv