As noted in Domestic Interagency Coordination in Anti-Corruption: The Case of the UK and International Best Practice, the UK anti-corruption model is not built around a single dedicated anti-corruption agency. Instead, it is a decentralised system in which responsibility for preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting corruption offences is distributed across a range of public bodies and specialised coordination structures.

Key actors in this system include, among others, the Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency, the International Corruption Unit, the International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre, the National Economic Crime Centre, the UK Financial Intelligence Unit, the Domestic Corruption Unit and the Joint Anti-Corruption Unit. More broadly, the UK’s anti-corruption infrastructure also encompasses prosecutorial, audit, expert and oversight institutions.

The report’s authors emphasise that this model has both strengths and significant risks.

On the one hand, the UK already has important elements of coordination infrastructure in place: a legal framework for data sharing, established channels for information exchange between law enforcement and oversight bodies, the suspicious activity reports regime, and dedicated platforms for cooperation between government, law enforcement agencies and the private sector. This makes it possible to draw on the expertise of different bodies, reduce the risk of concentrating powers in a single institution and support the coordination of complex cases.

On the other hand, a decentralised architecture requires clear allocation of responsibilities, consistent approaches to information exchange and agreed referral procedures between agencies. Among the main challenges in the UK anti-corruption infrastructure, the authors identify institutional fragmentation, siloed data, inconsistent data-recording standards and insufficient interoperability of information systems. These factors make it more difficult to build a coherent picture of corruption risks, complicate interagency referrals and limit the use of advanced analytics.

As possible areas for further development, the report highlights common data standards, interoperable registers, secure reporting channels, stronger protections for whistleblowers, structured corruption risk assessments, multi-disciplinary teams, and the use of big data and artificial intelligence.