Your Council Publishes Its Secrets Every Year. This Site Exists Because Almost Nobody Reads Them.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
In short. Councils are required by law to publish far more than most residents realise. This site reads those documents and reports what is in them. Every factual claim cites the document itself, not coverage of it; anything critical goes to the body concerned for reply before publication; and mistakes are recorded in a public corrections log.
Local government runs on documents that are public by law and unread in practice. The Local Government Transparency Code requires councils in England to publish spending over 500 pounds, contracts, land holdings and senior salaries [1]. Committee meetings have been open to the press and public since 1960 [2]. The Freedom of Information Act covers every council function beyond a short list of exemptions [3]. The paper trail exists. What is missing is readers.
The method, written down so it can be held against us
Claims cite documents, not coverage of documents. A figure on this site comes with a reference to the account, the minute, the register entry or the FOI response it appears in, so you can open the same page we did. Where the only available source is secondary, the piece says so plainly.
Criticism travels to its subject before it travels to you. Before anything critical of a named body or decision-maker is published, the specific claims go to that body for response, and the piece records what came back, including silence. Officers below decision-making level are described by role, not name.
Fact and comment stay visibly separate. What a document says is reported as fact with the document attached. What we make of it is written so you can tell it is a judgement. The build system enforces this mechanically: an evaluative claim without a citation in the same sentence stops the article from publishing at all.
Corrections are public. Errors get fixed in place and recorded in the corrections log, permanently. A scrutiny site that quietly edits its own record has no business scrutinising anyone else's.
What gets covered
Spending and accounts, planning decisions, meeting agendas and what actually happened to them, registers of interests, and what FOI responses reveal. The site is self-funded, carries no advertising, and takes no council money.
Sources
- Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, "Local government transparency code 2015" (the publication duties on English local authorities). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-government-transparency-code-2015
- Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 (the right of press and public to attend meetings). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/8-9/67
- Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the general right of access to information held by public authorities). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents