Accountancy firms accounted for £33.3bn contribution to UK GDP, while £47.4bn was generated from accountants working in-house in businesses, the public sector and non-profits in 2022.

This is the first CCAB state of the market report since 2018 and it showed that the GDP contribution of the UK accountancy profession had grown by 37% to £80.7bn in 2022 from £59bn in 2017.

Expenditure on accounting services by UK businesses reached £29.3bn in 2022 and accounted for £10.1bn in estimated tax contribution, research by Oxford Economics for CCAB showed, while the Irish accountancy sector was worth €19.8bn (£16.9bn) employing 83,600 staff.

The IT and professional services sectors, including law firms, were the largest purchasers of accounting services, in absolute value, and as a proportion of their total spends. The IT sector spent almost £6bn on accounting services in 2022 — or 4.5% — of its total spend, while the professional services sector spent £3.9bn.

In terms of staff numbers, there is an 828,000 strong workforce split between 323,300 staff working in practice, of whom 138,900 were accountancy professionals, and a further 505,000 employed in accountancy and support roles in business across the UK. This covered the full range of roles from accountants to tax advisers and auditors, and support staff. Interestingly this figure is up significantly on 2017 when there were around 25% less accounting jobs, with only 613,100 employees.

The public sector, education and health hired the most accountancy staff with 84,800, followed by manufacturing with 74,600 and wholesale and retail at 58,000.

Where there are clear signs of the changing profession, the number of audit firms has fallen significantly from 5,660 five years ago to 4,310 audit firms registered in the UK at the end of 2022. Consolidation of firms and rise of private equity backing has also changed the face of the profession with the number of firms with over £100m in income increasing by 50% over the past five years to 17 firms, up from 11 in 2017.

The total fee income of the Top 75 UK firms was £21.2bn in 2022, dominated by the Big Four firms which accounted for £15.9bn of revenue, led by PwC in number one slot, followed by Deloitte, with the firm always vying for the top position with around £10bn in combined fee income.

As well as providing analysis of the financial contribution, the CCAB report, The Accountancy Profession in the UK and Ireland, features a number of fascinating interviews and case studies with accountants, CFOs, interns and students working across practice, business and even the Treasury, which are well worth reading.

Julia Penny, CCAB chair, said: ‘The significant contributions underline the value of the accountancy profession to the prosperity of the UK and Ireland. Accountants are playing a key role in driving economic growth.

‘It’s not surprising to see that contributions have grown during the past five years given the impact of the pandemic and cost of doing business crisis.

‘Demand for our knowledge and skills remains strong, in part thanks to our expanding roles in dealing with a range of non-financial information.

‘I expect accountants to retain a central role as the profession evolves to further help businesses adapt to the climate emergency and technological advances, issues on which our future economic success and stability depend.’

The report also noted that export of accounting services has doubled in the last five years to £4bn, increasing its share of total UK service exports since 2016 by 0.3%, despite the changed trading landscape post-Brexit.  

Membership of professional bodies is growing with 357,200 registered members at the eight main professional accounting bodies in the UK and 44,000 in Ireland. Nearly a third of members belonged to ICAEW with 138,600 in total, followed by ACCA with 96,900 and CIMA with 81,500.

CCAB is the umbrella organisation for the UK and Ireland’s leading accountancy bodies - ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS, CIPFA and Chartered Accountants Ireland. 

CCAB report, The Accountancy Profession in the UK and Ireland [Jan 2024]