A Brief History of Government Spend Data

Transparency has moved from an experimental “nice-to-have” to a legal duty

Since the early 2010s, the UK has led the way in using open data to hold public bodies to account. A cornerstone of this movement is the requirement that local authorities and central government publish detailed “spend data”. By making who gets paid, when, and for what activities entirely transparent, these rules aim to improve public trust, root out waste and fraud, and enable journalists, campaigners, and citizens to gain new insights into how our taxes are spent.

Origins under the Coalition Government (2010–2015)
  • In the wake of the financial crisis and growing concern over government waste, the Coalition launched its Open Government programme in 2010. Early pilots released limited datasets, but public pressure—fanned by journalists and civil-society groups—quickly pushed ministers to go further.
  • The first Local Government Transparency Code was published in 2014, mandating quarterly publication of expenditure over £500. By forcing every council to put raw invoice data online, the government sought to end the “black box” of procurement and expenses.

Expansion and Updates (2015–2025)

  • The Code was formalized in January 2015, then updated to broaden its scope (e.g., procurement cards, land assets, senior salaries). A Government review in 2021 sharpened the rules on timeliness and machine readability.
  • In early 2025, a further refresh aligned local-authority requirements with new Cabinet Office guidance for central government, standardising thresholds and formats across the public sector.

Why It Matters Today

  • Transparency has moved from an experimental “nice-to-have” to a legal duty. Councils that fail to publish compliant data can face intervention by the Department for Levelling Up.
What Gets Published: The Essentials of Spend Data

Although thresholds differ between local and central bodies, the core datasets include:

  • Expenditure over £500 (local councils) or £25,000 (central departments)
  • Government Procurement Card (GPC) transactions over £500
  • Contracts and invitations to tender (typically above £5,000 for councils; £12,000 for central)
  • Prompt-payment performance (how quickly invoices are paid)

All data must be published quarterly (or monthly, for central spend), in open, machine-readable formats (CSV or JSON), under an open licence.

Why Publish Spend Data?
  • Accountability & Scrutiny. When raw invoice details are online, any citizen or journalist can trace public money in fine detail.
  • Efficiency Gains. Councils can benchmark their procurement against peers, driving down costs. Shared data underpins collaborative buying consortia.
  • Fraud Detection. Automated tools scan spending patterns to flag irregularities—saving millions by spotting duplicate payments or out-of-policy transactions.
  • Public Engagement. Civic groups build neighbourhood-level spending maps, while tech startups create apps to help residents understand local budgets.
Notable Use Cases
  1. The Guardian’s “Transparency Project”
    Journalists used local-authority spend files to reveal how millions of pounds went to outsourcing firms with political ties. Interactive visualizations showed, for instance, that some councils were spending ten times more per head on consultancy services than their neighbors.
  2. COVID-19 PPE Tracking
    During the pandemic, procurement-data dashboards built by volunteers helped track which suppliers received emergency contracts for personal protective equipment. This work exposed instances of overpayment and questioned why some small companies won multi-million-pound deals.
  3. Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust & KPMG
    Facing £20 million of annual addressable spend across five major corporate-services contracts, RBFT engaged KPMG to apply advanced spend-analytics tools to transaction-level data. Within three months, KPMG’s deep-dive uncovered over-charging and unclaimed rebates, delivering £1 million of realised cash savings—equivalent to up to 13 percent reduction on those reviewed contracts—and establishing processes to sustain this level of contract performance year after year.
Looking Ahead

With each annual update to the Transparency Code, the UK pushes closer to “real-time” accountability. As data quality and standardization improve, we can expect even more innovative uses—from AI-driven fraud alerts to community-focused budgeting tools. What began as a dot-gov pilot in 2010 has become a vibrant ecosystem: one where every line of spending can spark a story, a reform, or a grassroots campaign to make public money do more for everyone.

Want see the data in action? Doorda provides access to all the public spend data, contact us to arrange a demo.