Transparency in local government

3.18  The Government's approach to encouraging transparency in local government is set out in its Code of Recommended Practice for Local Authorities on Data Transparency, which it published in September 2011.24 It sets out minimum expectations for data release among local public bodies. With respect to the requirement to publish expenditure over £500, all councils have published data on their spending transactions with one exception, Nottingham City Council. We reviewed how far other key elements of the Code have been adopted, based on a sample of more than 200 English councils (Figure 5).

3.19  There is variation in how far councils provide relevant information. To an extent, this refects that some Code elements were not part of the draft Code, and therefore the Government's expectation of publication of these items is more recent. However, even for items where information is published, many of the releases do not include all of the information set out in the Code. For example, although 88 per cent of councils have published senior pay information, more than half of these releases do not describe the numbers of staff reporting to them or the budgets that they control.

3.20  We also reviewed whether councils had published their expenditure data over £500 timeously and in machine-readable formats. Of the 202 councils we reviewed, 89 per cent have published the data by month, with one example of weekly releases and 88 per cent have published data in a non-proprietary, machine-readable format. At the time of our review, 82 per cent had produced data from the previous month, though in 4 per cent of cases, spending transaction data were four or more months old.