Saturday 1 January 2011

Newham Council Fails To Publish Spending Data Online

Happy New Year - and as of today, it should have been possible, as promised, to visit Newham council's website and view all the local authority's financial transactions over £500. Other councils managed to make this information available months ago.

Guidance published by the Department of Communities and Local Government in September 2010 set out in detail how this data should be presented and in November, the council promised in response to a Freedom of Information request that it would "comply with the regulations regarding publication of payments set out by Government".

Bearing in mind Newham's legendary distaste for openness and transparency, however, it comes as absolutely no surprise that, despite having had plenty of time to comply, the council has failed to do so by the start of January.

It now has until the end of the month to get its act together and I'd be reluctant to bet that the council provides information in a format that is accessible to local people. What, one wonders, do they have to hide?

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I got the same FOI response from Newham as you did; basically, Newham will only start to publish the info when it is legally obliged to do so.

Anonymous said...

Newham has now published its data for December in glorius pdf format 115 pages of A3 data. Essential bedtime reading. http://www.newham.gov.uk/YourCouncil/FinancialManagementAccountancyAndPensions/Paymentstosuppliers.htm

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