In new research in collaboration with the University of Sussex, we make a series of urgent recommendations for making council finances less opaque during this time of critical challenge and upheaval in local government.
At a time when scrutiny of council finances is even more important than ever – as authorities declare effective bankruptcy and rely on borrowing and flogging off their assets to balance the books – even experienced researchers, accountants and councillors struggle to find and understand local authority financial information.
This is the core finding of a new report by Research for Action and the University of Sussex published this month. By speaking to councillors, council officers, academics, accountants, journalists and members of sector bodies, this study examines barriers to making local authority financial information accessible to councillors and the wider public.
Our research has found that a range of factors – from a lack of standard reporting requirements and formats, to strained council capacity after years of austerity and a lack of data standards – are all hindering understanding accessibility, understanding and scrutiny of councils finances.
Councillors and in some cases council officers do not have the training and expertise required to understand, scrutinise and make decisions on the basis of local authority budgets and accounts. And their job is made hard by a fragmented data landscape with no standard formats for publishing financial information in machine-readable formats.
The age of austerity has hit finance departments at local authorities up and down the country, meaning officers often do not have capacity to ensure financial information is accessible to elected officials and members of the public. Meanwhile accessibility of financial information is often treated as a low priority and not recognised as a fundamental ingredient of public participation and effective democracy.
We also look to examples of best practice in opening up council finances because the UK has a lot to learn from other countries on the value of financial transparency.
And finally, we provide a set of recommendations for the central and local government to improve accessibility of local authority financial information. It is vital that this openness and public participation are considered in the government’s reforms of the local government sector in years to come.
Click to download the report: Making Financial Info Accessible_Aug2025
Click to read the policy recommendations paper: Policy Brief Making Financial Info Accessible Aug 2025
