Show me the money

Author: Mark Conrad and Jonathan Werran, The MJ   |  

Ministers have halved local government’s spending transparency threshold – from all items worth more than £500 to all transactions above £250 – and warned that authorities which needlessly redact information face future scrutiny.

In an exclusive interview with The MJ this week, local government minister Bob Neill confirmed the DCLG had effectively halved the transparency threshold from this autumn, after councils responded positively to initial changes aimed at boosting spending accountability.

‘We’ve been operating on a £500 transparency threshold for some time now, and every council in the country, bar Nottingham City Council, has signed up for that. What we are now proposing to do is go down to £250,’ Mr Neill said.

Updated DCLG guidance will shortly ask councils to disclose, on a monthly basis and for public consumption, all transactions of £250 or more – with the exception of commercially-sensitive material. Ministers will turn into law the default £500 transparency requirement – introduced in 2010 – but have urged councils to begin publishing data according to the desired £250 threshold.

Lowering the disclosure limit represents a minimal change for authorities, Mr Neill added, because the systems for publishing spending data were already in place.

Mr Neill said the Government wished to improve transparency ‘as a matter of principle’ across the public sector. ‘The lower you can get the threshold, the more information is out there for the public,’ he said. ‘As a matter of public right, people should have as much information as possible.’

Ministers have not made a formal announcement over the new and lower non-mandatory threshold – although they wrote to the Local Government Association explaining their proposal some time ago.

LGA chief executive Carolyn Downs let slip the plan at a parliamentary hearing last month, although few senior council officials picked up on the statement.

Mr Neill said his department had led by example, and now published all spending above £250. All other Whitehall departments merely publish spending above £25,000.

Last month, Telford and Wrekin Council voted to make available all items of spending above £100 as part of its efforts to boost transparency.

Ministers even considered a zero-level spending threshold, Mr Neill revealed, but eventually rejected the
idea on the grounds of impracticality.

Responding to evidence that some local authorities have stymied local spending transparency by redacting large amounts of their monthly data, the minister promised to monitor whether councils act in accordance with the spirit, and the letter, of the updated code on data transparency. Calling on authorities ‘to play the game’, Mr Neill said councils must provide good and compelling reasons for redaction.

‘I’m a localist and want to trust local authorities. But local authorities also have to accept that localism doesn’t stop at the door of the town hall. It means being open to their residents, their citizens and their media so they can be held to account.’

But, citing MPs recent concerns that too much local government data was simply ‘dumped’ into the public domain without context, a spokesman for the LGA said: ‘The DCLG seems to be pushing ahead without the evidence base called for by the public accounts committee, which demanded a proper assessment of the costs and benefits of publishing raw data.’

Chief executive of campaign group, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Matthew Sinclair, said transparency helps cut down on wasteful spending and allows residents to hold councillors and council officers to account.

‘A number of councils already provide more details of their spending than they are obliged to – and it’s no coincidence that a number of those have managed to cut Council Tax and improve services for residents,’ said Mr Sinclair.