Councils to put spending data online next year

Denham: Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent

Council spending reports are to be published online in a new move by government to improve the transparency of local services, communities minister John Denham said last week.

Currently those wishing to look into local councils' spending need to trawl through reports and statistics from several different sources, many of which are not available online.

But Denham said that from next summer spending information will be published online in a clear and user-friendly format that will enable the data to be easily evaluated.

"The changes we are making will make [the evaluation of data] much easier and are part of a wider transformation in the way public services are delivered, making them more people centred and shifting power to the user," he said.

"Taxpayers have a right to know how their hard earned money is being spent."

The reports will also include more up-to-date information, greater detail on spending by local quangos, more details of grant payments from central to local government and web links taking users directly to relevant sources of additional information.

By March 2010 an improved mapping facility will allow users to look at spending by clicking onto and scrolling over high quality maps (PDF).

The government said that the move will help more authorities follow the lead of the 13 councils involved in the Total Place programme that forces them to rigorously examine all the money and resources going into a particular area as well as measuring outcomes against residents' needs.

The authorities involved in Total Place have said that the process of collecting data on public spending has been time consuming and expensive. The government hopes that Local Spending Reports will help ease this problem.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently appointed artifical intelligence expert Nigel Shadbolt to lead a wider scheme encouraging local authorities to put council information online.

By putting recycling, transport, street work and planning data online, the government hopes to improve transparency and allow the public to develop new ways of interacting with state information.