Hackney Council redacted ‘secret’ payments worth £14m in one month, report finds

‘Secrecy’: the report criticises Hackney Council for redacting £14m in payments last May

Hackney Council spent £14 million of taxpayers’ money in May last year without revealing where it was going, according to a new report.

It is the largest amount redacted in a single month by any public body in England between 2011 and 2015.

Research by anti-corruption campaigners Transparency International (TI) also found that more than a third of local or central government contracts awarded during that time were shrouded in mystery, with the public unable to find out who benefitted.

The charity’s Counting the Pennies report is based on data from transactions worth over £2 trillion.

Duncan Hames, TI’s policy director, said the government’s commitment to a national action plan on transparency is a “positive step”, but called for more work to be done to ensure proposals are implemented.

Hames said: “Whether exposing lobbying abuses or unearthing undeclared conflicts of interest, open data is an essential tool in the fight against corruption. Real transparency significantly reduces hiding places for corrupt individuals and allows the public to hold the government to account.”

The report also found that 0.75 per cent of transactions contained a company recognition number, which allows the supplier to be easily traced through Companies House.

And public bodies used more than 81,000 different column names to categorise how their money was spent. These descriptions were often so imprecise that, according to researchers, they were “almost meaningless”.

Critic: Duncan Hames has called for more openness. Photograph: Transparency International

Hames added: “Transparency isn’t just about dumping data – it must also be easy to access and read, timely, and crucially complete. There is a danger that although the government is ticking the right boxes, the true spirit of transparency is being lost. The result is a missed opportunity to flush out questionable contacts and root out waste.”

University of Sussex students were given access to TI’s data to try and make sense of how councils were spending taxpayers’ money. One commented: “You can’t find malpractice with the tools that have been provided.”

Another said: “If you’re a citizen, you would simply give up.”

In response to questions about the redacted £14m spent in May last year, a Hackney Council spokesperson said: “A large proportion of the figures listed were direct debit payments. We weren’t able to include the details of these payments in data collection at that time, but the value of the payments was included so that we could offer as much information as possible.

“Since April 2016, following improvements to our banking system, we have been able to provide the full details.”

The spokesperson revealed that some of the redacted payments were for utilities and waste facilities, whilst others went to the Greater London Authority.