Britain’s most transparent council
Friday October 1, 2010
Hammersmith & Fulham Council has made public its aim of becoming Britain’s most transparent local council.
It is working with the spotlightonspend website (opens new window) to radically improve the accessibility, relevance and value of data on its spending.
The Council will not only make its external payments transparent to the public in as Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, has asked councils to do, but intends to go further than any other local authority by providing visibility of its:
- payments to the voluntary sector,
- members’ allowances and expenses,
- the register of buildings and land owned by the Council,
- total spend as recorded in its finance system.
Spikes Cavell has undertaken to adapt the spotlightonspend platform to facilitate the access by the general public and open data community to these new data.
“We don’t want to simply grudgingly comply with the Government requirements on external payments as just a box ticking exercise,” said Harry Phibbs, Cabinet Minister for Community Engagement at Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
“We saw tremendous scope to work closely with Spikes Cavell and its spotlightonspend platform to take transparency much further.
“The vast majority of spending any council undertakes is not payments to suppliers, but rather its ongoing running costs and operational investments.
“Information not only needs to be transparent and accessible, but also intelligible to the general public so that it is meaningful and easily understood.
“It’s useless to simply have raw data - it needs to be presented in a format people can follow.
“Spikes Cavell has done an outstandingly good job of that as far as we’re concerned, and we’re very pleased to be entering this collaboration.”
Hammersmith & Fulham is already the country's most efficient council, and was named as the best council in Britain earlier this year, reducing council tax by 3% for the fourth consecutive year, while its services have been recognised by the Audit Commission as being amongst the best in the country.
The Council has also seen the largest increase in council satisfaction and value for money scores in the country.
As one of the country’s leading councils, Hammersmith & Fulham is now collaborating with Spikes Cavell to extend its innovative spotlightonspend platform to push the boundaries on what transparency means.
Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said, "Hammersmith and Fulham are leading the way in letting the sunlight of openness into local government. They are showing that transparency not only increases democratic accountability, but also helps councils save money and cut waste. By publishing data in an open and standardised format, we can help transform our public services through levering in the innovation of the voluntary and commercial sector and the wider internet community.”
Luke Spikes, CEO of Spikes Cavell & Co, which operates the spotlightonspend service, added, “With the pressure on local authorities to deliver more for less during the age of austerity, Hammersmith & Fulham Council are a great example of how the public sector can use private sector innovation to help prompt further savings both internally and externally.
“We’re expecting to go live with Hammersmith & Fulham’s spend with third party suppliers, along with a machine readable download file of the raw data for payments in excess of £500 at the end of October.”
