Council Spending and Transparency
Treat every pound of public money as if it were your own.
Every pound the council spends is your money. Too often it is spent with too little scrutiny, on contracts most residents never see, and explained only after the decision is made. We think that is the wrong way round.
The problem
Council budgets are large, complicated and easy to hide things in. Waste rarely arrives as one big scandal. It builds up quietly, in contracts that are never questioned and spending that is never explained in plain English.
What we do
On Burnley Borough Council our councillors are the largest opposition group, and we use that to scrutinise spending, contracts and value for money and to ask the questions that get glossed over.
We have also put the council’s own spending in front of residents. Our spending explorer lets anyone search Burnley Borough Council’s published payments to suppliers over £500, by supplier, service and amount. It is on this site, open to everyone, no login required.
An honest caveat
The published "over £500" data is a transparency return, not the council’s entire budget, and we say so plainly. Inclusion of a payment is not an allegation that anything is wrong with it. The point is simple: residents should be able to look for themselves.
Our commitments
- Keep the public spending explorer live and up to date on this site.
- Scrutinise contracts and value for money at every opportunity on the borough.
- Demand plain, public answers on how local money is spent, before decisions are taken.