Gilts are issued by the UK Debt Management Office on behalf of HM Treasury, and the outstanding nominal per gilt sits beside its DMO yield on the gilt's own record.
Who issues gilts
Gilts are UK government debt, and the government's borrowing is managed by HM Treasury. The body that actually issues gilts is the UK Debt Management Office, an executive agency of HM Treasury. The Debt Management Office runs the issuance, publishes the calendar of what it will sell, and keeps the reference data for each gilt — including how much of it is in issue. A reader looking for the authoritative record of a gilt, its coupon and its outstanding amount is looking at the Debt Management Office's own data.
This matters because the site does not invent the facts about a gilt. It reads what the Debt Management Office publishes and presents it, day by day, alongside the day's market pricing. Knowing who issues gilts is knowing where the primary source is: the buyer and the borrower are not negotiating in private, but through a published, regular process.
How gilts reach the market
The Debt Management Office sells gilts through a small number of mechanisms. The main one is the auction, in which a gilt is offered on a set date and buyers bid for it. Some gilts, typically larger or longer-dated ones, are sold by syndication, where a group of banks places the gilt with investors. A tap issue sells more of an existing gilt, and smaller operations add to holdings between the main events. The common thread is that issuance is announced in advance, so the market knows what is coming.
The pricing at an auction is set by demand. When a new gilt is sold, the price the market pays fixes its yield for that moment, and once the gilt trades freely its price moves with everything else. So the amount a gilt raises, the coupon it carries and the yield it trades at are three different things, and a reader who wants to understand a gilt should keep them distinct.
What in issue means
The amount in issue is the outstanding nominal of a gilt: the total face value that has been sold and not yet repaid. Where a gilt is topped up through further sales, its amount in issue grows over time until it matures. The figure tells a reader how large a particular gilt is — how much of the government's borrowing sits in that one maturity — which is a different question from how much one holding is worth.
Amount in issue is not the same as market value. A gilt's amount in issue is measured in nominal, at face value; the market value of all of it would be the amount in issue multiplied by the day's price per £100 nominal. Because the two are measured differently, a large gilt can carry a nominal amount that is nowhere near the cash it would raise at the market price, and vice versa.
Reading the record beside the yield
For each gilt, the site shows the coupon, the amount in issue and the day's market figures together. The yield is quoted as a DMO yield — the same yield under the UK Debt Management Office's market convention: coupons twice a year, counted on actual days — so the market figure and the official facts sit on terms that match the source. The table below shows which figure answers which question.
| Figure | What it shows | Where it comes from |
| Coupon | The fixed interest the gilt pays each year | The gilt's own terms |
| Outstanding nominal | How much of the gilt is in issue | The Debt Management Office reference |
| DMO yield | The day's return, on the DMO convention | The day's market pricing |
| Maturity date | When the nominal is repaid | The gilt's own terms |
Putting the official record and the market figure side by side is the point of the page. A gilt's amount in issue is a stable fact published by the Debt Management Office; its yield is a moving figure from the market. Reading them together shows a gilt as both a quantity of government borrowing and a priced instrument.
Why the amount in issue matters
A larger amount in issue usually means a more heavily traded gilt, because more of it exists to change hands. That can make it easier to buy or sell without moving the price. A small, older gilt can be less liquid, which is a reason two gilts with similar coupons and maturities can trade at slightly different yields. The amount in issue is therefore one of the facts that helps explain why the market prices one gilt the way it does.
It is also a way to read the shape of government borrowing across maturities. A program that issues heavily at one part of the curve and lightly at another changes how much sits in each maturity, which in turn feeds into how those gilts trade. None of this is a recommendation; it is the background that makes a row on the gilt list mean something beyond a single price.
Where to see it on the site
The conventional gilts list carries each gilt's coupon and DMO yield, and opening a gilt from that list gives its own page, where the per-£100 cash-flow schedule sets out every future coupon and the final repayment. Together they show what a gilt pays and when, which sits alongside the amount-in-issue figure from the Debt Management Office to give a full picture of a single gilt.
Background, not advice
This page is a reference on who issues gilts and how the amount in issue is recorded; it is general background, not investment, tax or legal advice for any reader's circumstances. Issue amounts, coupons and maturity dates come from the UK Debt Management Office, and yields come from the day's market data. Those are the primary sources for any figure, and this page restates the mechanism rather than quoting a current level.