Analysis · No. 6
Did they listen?
What happens after a UK government consultation: how often the plan changes, how long the answer takes, and how many answers never come.
What government decided
We read 529 published responses. The most common outcome was “proceeding with changes”: 38% of them, or about 4 in 10.
Otherwise, 18% said it would go ahead as proposed, 5% that it wanted more consultation or a review first and 2% that it had dropped or paused the idea.
For 37% we could not tell. That is 194 responses. In these, the summary and any web-page version did not say, or no quote from the text backed the reading. Leave those out and 61% of the 335 clear answers involved changes.
What the response said would happen
529 GOV.UK consultation responses, read one by one. Share of all responses read.
“With changes” means the response itself says something was changed, dropped or added. It does not say whose comments led to the change.
What each label means
| Label | What it means | Responses |
|---|---|---|
| Proceeding as proposed | The government says it will go ahead with what it consulted on, without material changes. | 96 |
| Proceeding with changes | It will go ahead, but has changed, dropped or added something compared with the proposal. | 203 |
| Not proceeding or paused | It has dropped the proposal, or put it on hold. | 10 |
| Further consultation or review | No final decision yet: it plans more consultation, a review, a pilot or more evidence first. | 26 |
| Unclear | The summary and any HTML response do not say, or the quote offered could not be found in the text. | 194 |
Has it changed over time?
The same results, by the year the consultation closed. We leave out years with fewer than 20 responses read.
Outcome by year the consultation closed
Share of responses read in each year. Recent years are incomplete because their slow responses have not arrived yet.
- Proceeding as proposed
- Proceeding with changes
- Not proceeding or paused
- Further consultation or review
- Unclear
- 2021 (23 read)17%30%13%39%
- 2022 (125 read)14%44%37%
- 2023 (134 read)20%37%31%
- 2024 (105 read)21%34%37%
- 2025 (111 read)14%41%42%
- 2026 (31 read)35%29%35%
Show the numbers
| Closed in | Read | Proceeding as proposed | Proceeding with changes | Not proceeding or paused | Further consultation or review | Unclear |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 23 | 17% | 30% | 0% | 13% | 39% |
| 2022 | 125 | 14% | 44% | 2% | 3% | 37% |
| 2023 | 134 | 20% | 37% | 4% | 7% | 31% |
| 2024 | 105 | 21% | 34% | 2% | 6% | 37% |
| 2025 | 111 | 14% | 41% | 0% | 3% | 42% |
| 2026 | 31 | 35% | 29% | 0% | 0% | 35% |
How long the answer takes
The government’s own consultation principles say a response should be published within 12 weeks of a consultation closing, or the department should explain why not.
Of the 2,036 consultations that closed at least 12 weeks ago, 495 had a response within that time: 24%, or about 1 in 4. The typical wait was 174 days, about 25 weeks.
Time from closing date to published response
1,633 consultations with a response. Hover a bar for the count.
The response date is the day GOV.UK marked the page as answered. A page edited again later can carry a later date than the real one, so a few waits will be overstated.
By the year the consultation closed
The typical wait includes consultations still waiting, for as long as they have waited. So quick answers alone do not flatter recent years.
| Closed in | Consultations | Answered so far | Within 12 weeks | Typical wait |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 90 | 93% | 24% | 179 days |
| 2022 | 456 | 89% | 27% | 174 days |
| 2023 | 458 | 88% | 28% | 153 days |
| 2024 | 380 | 77% | 22% | 223 days |
| 2025 | 416 | 81% | 22% | 168 days |
| 2026 | 391 | 39% | 20% | 194 days |
2021 starts in October, five years before the data was taken. The latest year is incomplete.
The ones that never came
258 of the 1,743 consultations that closed more than a year ago still have no published response: 15%, or about 1 in 7.
Some may still come. The chart shows how many are still waiting at each age.
Still waiting, by when the consultation closed
Share of consultations with no published response yet.
By department
Among the main departments, Education answered 33% of its consultations within 12 weeks, and HM Treasury 7%. A department or body with fewer than 20 cases in a column shows “too few to say”.
Responses by department
The main Whitehall departments, and any other public body with at least 20 consultations.
| Department or body | Consultations | Answered within 12 weeks | Typical wait | No response after a year | Responses read | With changes | As proposed | Not proceeding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Housing, Communities and Local Government | 173 | 15% | 179 days | 16% | 36 | 58% | 11% | 0% |
| Energy Security and Net Zero | 170 | 16% | 196 days | 11% | 39 | 44% | 3% | 0% |
| Environment, Food and Rural Affairs | 167 | 19% | 235 days | 14% | 32 | 47% | 19% | 0% |
| Business, trade and science (DBT, DSIT, BEIS) | 163 | 23% | 165 days | 15% | 35 | 37% | 11% | 3% |
| Transport | 122 | 17% | 274 days | 12% | 32 | 47% | 19% | 9% |
| HM Revenue and Customs | 121 | 19% | 164 days | 24% | 18 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Competition and Markets Authority | 114 | 44% | 88 days | 1% | 44 | 9% | 57% | 5% |
| Education | 104 | 33% | 134 days | 14% | 14 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Health and Social Care | 100 | 30% | 181 days | 14% | 27 | 44% | 19% | 0% |
| Natural England | 99 | 67% | 41 days | 16% | 28 | 4% | 4% | 0% |
| Home Office | 96 | 23% | 219 days | 14% | 37 | 49% | 11% | 0% |
| HM Treasury | 91 | 7% | 197 days | 14% | 23 | 39% | 17% | 4% |
| Ministry of Justice | 65 | 14% | 241 days | 19% | 18 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Environment Agency | 64 | 30% | 149 days | 10% | 24 | 50% | 21% | 0% |
| Building Digital UK | 48 | 4% | 301 days | 4% | 8 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Maritime and Coastguard Agency | 46 | 51% | 84 days | 5% | 15 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Culture, Media and Sport | 45 | 26% | 163 days | 3% | 15 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Work and Pensions | 43 | 29% | 120 days | 10% | 5 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Office of Rail and Road | 41 | 38% | 145 days | 3% | 18 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Marine Management Organisation | 39 | 6% | not yet half | 84% | 0 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Ofqual | 28 | 57% | 71 days | 0% | 11 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency | 27 | 4% | 372 days | 33% | 4 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Ministry of Defence | 16 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say | 1 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
| Cabinet Office | 15 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say | 6 | too few to say | too few to say | too few to say |
Some examples
We pick one of each kind by rule: the most recent response with that label whose short quote states the decision. Quotes are word for word from the response.
-
Proceeding with changes
Proposals for an update to standard rules permit SR2008 No 9: storage of asbestos waste
“Following the consultation, the responses have all been considered and the standard rules set has been updated to add clarity to address many of the relevant concerns.”
-
Proceeding as proposed
FS Sector Strategy: Regulatory Environment - Cross-Cutting Reforms
“The government will bring forward primary legislation to deliver the reforms when Parliamentary time allows.”
-
Not proceeding or paused
Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme Review: supplementary consultation
“Our conclusions are as follows. We will not make changes to the Scheme's scope, time limits and unspent convictions rule at the present time.”
-
Further consultation or review
NHS Constitution: 10 year review
“We will be developing the next consultation on the NHS Constitution to align with the 10 Year Health Plan's ambitions. Exact timings for this will be set out in due course.”
If you respond to a consultation
- Expect a wait. The typical response took 174 days, and 24% came within the 12 weeks government aims for.
- Some never come. About 1 in 7 consultations that closed over a year ago have no response.
- Read the response, not the headline. 38% of the responses we read said the plan had changed. The response itself sets out what changed.
See every open consultation, and when a response is likely, with Ask.
How we did this
Method and caveats
Data. Every consultation on GOV.UK that closed between 1 October 2021 and 1 November 2026: 2,191 in all, from the GOV.UK Search API. A consultation counts as answered when GOV.UK lists it as a consultation outcome. We do not include consultations run only on a department’s own website, or by the devolved governments.
Timing. The wait is the number of days from the closing date to the date GOV.UK marked the page as answered. 46 responses dated before their own closing date are left out of the timing figures. Usually the closing date was moved after the fact. The typical wait is a median that counts consultations still waiting, for as long as they have waited (a Kaplan-Meier estimate). So quick answers alone do not flatter recent years. The 12-week share counts only consultations that closed at least 12 weeks ago.
What was decided. For 529 answered consultations we took the outcome summary GOV.UK publishes on the consultation page. Where the response is also a GOV.UK web page, we took the text of that page too. We asked a language model (claude-haiku-4-5) to choose one of five labels using that text alone, and to copy out a sentence that supports it. A computer check then looks for that sentence in the text, word for word. If it is not there, we mark the case unclear. That happened 132 times. 295 of the responses read had a web-page version. 117 were published only as PDFs or other files, so only their short summary was read. The other 117 had no response document attached, so the outcome summary was all there was to read.
The labels. Proceeding as proposed: the government says it will go ahead with what it consulted on, without material changes. Proceeding with changes: it will go ahead, but has changed, dropped or added something compared with the proposal. Not proceeding or paused: it has dropped the proposal, or put it on hold. Further consultation or review: no final decision yet: it plans more consultation, a review, a pilot or more evidence first. Unclear: the summary and any HTML response do not say, or the quote offered could not be found in the text.
Limits. “Proceeding with changes” says the plan changed, not why, and not whose comments caused it. A department may change a plan for reasons that have nothing to do with the consultation. PDF responses are not read, and a short summary often says only that a response has been published, which is why many of those cases are unclear. A model can misread a long response. The quote check stops it inventing support, but does not catch every misreading. The worked examples are picked by a fixed rule, so you can check them yourself.
Groups. Renamed departments are counted with the department they became (BEIS with DBT and DSIT, DLUHC with MHCLG). Any group with fewer than 20 cases shows “too few to say” rather than a share.