For the financial year of 2010-2011, the UK Treasury planned to reduce government expenses by £4.4 billion, enough to give every single person (yes, including all the children) £60. However, when reviewing their final, departmental balances, they were astonished to find that they hadn’t just met their target, they completely smashed it!

In total, £11.1 billion was saved from many national services, such as the police force and the main contributor, the National Health Service (known to most as the NHS). This number is a whopping £6.7 billion under the planned budget reduction, but not all of it will be directed back to those departments. The Institute for Fiscal Studies claims that just £0.9 billion of this will move into the next year, with the rest being reallocated to other applications.

The NHS cut £1.7 billion of this, equivalent to the yearly salary of 68,000 nurses or 13,000 doctors! This is only 1.6% of the total allowance for the system, but the Department of Energy and Climate Change actually saved on 13.9%. On average, 98.6% of the money given to the entirety of the departments was spent still. With these figures, to remove all the departments completely would result in a saving of £792 billion, just over a third of the UK’s public debt. That really shows the extent of the financial crisis that has struck most of the world.

But what do you think? Are you pleased that even in these harsh times the government can find ways to reduce spending? Or has the last year just been a bit of luck in their calculations? Leave your thoughts below!