Hackney Council yet to publish spending over £500
Local Government secretary Eric Pickles has demanded that local councils publish online full details of every spend over £500 by the end of the month, allowing taxpayers to see how money is spent
Hackney Council is one of ten London boroughs yet to publish online details of items of expenditure over £500, in line with government guidance set in place last year. With 31 January as the deadline, Hackney and other remaining councils have just two weeks left to comply.
The call for financial openness was announced in June last year by Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
He said: “Getting council business out in the open will revolutionise local government. Local people should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard earned cash is being spent and decisions made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips.
“The public should be able to see where their money goes and what it delivers. The swift and simple changes we are calling for today will unleash an army of armchair auditors and quite rightly make those charged with doling out the pennies stop and think twice about whether they are getting value for money.”
The government has said local councils should reveal details of all items of spending over £500 by the end of January.
London Councils, whose chair is Hackney’s elected Mayor Jules Pipe, has told the BBC that local authorities in London are on course to meet the deadline.
Twenty-two of the 32 London boroughs have now made details of their spending over £500 available online, including nearby Camden and Islington councils.
The amount of information disclosed about each item of spending is at the discretion of individual boroughs, as long as they meet the minimum requirements. Barrow Borough Council, for example, provides only the name of the supplier and the amount paid to them, whilst other councils go into greater depth.
Boroughs also differ in whether they present their data in a weekly, monthly or quarterly format. It is not yet known how Hackney Council intends to present its spending data.
The London councils still due to publish the information are: Greenwich, Hackney, Lambeth, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets, Barking and Dagenham, Ealing, Harrow, Havering and Newham.
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