GuidesEngland

The Transparency Code

The Local Government Transparency Code 2015 sets out the data English councils must publish about their spending, contracts, land, staff and more. This guide summarises what it requires and how often.

Updated 30 September 2026.

1. What the code is

The code was issued by the Secretary of State on 27 February 2015 as a code of recommended practice under section 2 of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980.^[1]^[2] It replaced a 2014 version.

Part 2 of the code is mandatory. The Local Government (Transparency Requirements) (England) Regulations 2015 require the authorities it covers to publish the information in Part 2, in the manner, form and at the times Part 2 sets, from 1 April 2015.^[3] Part 3 sets out further publication that is recommended but not required.^[1]

2. Who it applies to

The code applies in England to county, district and London borough councils, the Common Council of the City of London, the Council of the Isles of Scilly, combined authorities, fire and rescue authorities, National Park authorities, the Broads Authority, joint waste and waste disposal authorities, the Greater London Authority and Transport for London, among others. It does not apply to police and crime commissioners. An authority publishes data only for the functions it carries out.^[1]

The code also covers parish councils with a gross annual income or spending above £200,000, but the regulations make Part 2 binding only on parish councils above £6.5 million.^[1]^[3] Parish councils and other small bodies with a turnover of £25,000 or less follow a separate Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities.^[4]

3. What is published every quarter

Dataset	What is published
Spending over £500	Each individual item of expenditure over £500: date, department, beneficiary, summary of purpose, amount, VAT that cannot be recovered, and merchant category. Staff salaries are left out.
Procurement card transactions	Every transaction on a Government Procurement Card, with the same details.
Invitations to tender over £5,000	Each invitation to tender for goods or services worth more than £5,000: reference, title, description, start, end and review dates, and the department responsible.
Contracts over £5,000	Each contract, purchase order, framework agreement or other agreement worth more than £5,000: reference, title, department, description, supplier, value, VAT that cannot be recovered, dates, whether it followed a published tender or a request for quotes, and whether the supplier is a small or medium-sized business or a voluntary or community organisation.

Grants to voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations can be marked in the spending or contract data, or published as a separate list once a year.^[1]

4. What is published every year

Dataset	What is published
Land and building assets	Every land and building asset, with its location, reference numbers and whether it is freehold or leasehold. Social housing is covered separately.
Social housing asset value	The value of housing stock held in the Housing Revenue Account, by postal sector, in value bands.
Grants to voluntary bodies	Grants to voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations: date, period, department, beneficiary, registration number, purpose and amount.
Organisation chart	Staff in the top three levels of the organisation earning more than £50,000: grade, job title, department and team, whether permanent or temporary, contact details and salary in £5,000 bands.
Trade union facility time	The number of union representatives, how many spend at least half their time on union duties, the unions represented, and an estimate of spending on facility time as a share of the pay bill.
Parking account	Income and spending on parking, with on-street, off-street and penalty charge income shown separately, and how any surplus was spent.
Parking spaces	The number of marked-out controlled on-street and off-street parking spaces.
Senior salaries	The number of employees paid £50,000 or more in £5,000 bands, and for employees earning more than £50,000 their job title, responsibilities, budget and staff, and any bonuses and benefits in kind. Employees paid £150,000 or more are named.
Constitution	The council's constitution, on its website.
Pay multiple	The ratio between the highest taxable earnings and the median earnings across the whole workforce.
Fraud	The use of certain counter-fraud powers, the staff and specialists working on fraud, the amount spent investigating and prosecuting it, and the number of cases investigated.

The code also required councils to publish details of their existing waste collection contracts once, alongside their first quarterly contract data.^[1]

5. Timing and format

Quarterly data must be published no later than one month after the end of the quarter it covers. Annual data must be published no later than one month after the end of the year it covers.^[1]

The data must be published in open and machine-readable formats. The code recommends the Open Government Licence, so that anyone can reuse the data. Where a council finds an error, it publishes revised data showing the change.^[1]

6. What the code recommends

Part 3 encourages councils to go further. It recommends, among other things, publishing spending monthly or in real time and for every transaction over £250, publishing all card transactions, publishing contracts over £5,000 in full, giving suppliers' Companies House numbers, and publishing a pipeline of tenders expected over the next 12 months.^[1]

7. Since the Procurement Act 2023

In January 2025 the government published guidance on how the code fits with the Procurement Act 2023. From 24 February 2025 a council may publish its tenders and contracts between £5,000 and £30,000 as notices on the central digital platform, Find a Tender, and doing so meets the code's duty to publish them. This is optional but recommended, and a council that does so should say so on its website. Earlier quarterly data stays on the council's website, and the rest of the code is unchanged.^[5]

The guide to contract notices covers the notices themselves.

8. How SIBA uses these records

SIBA reads the spending, contract and other data councils publish under the code, and compares what is published, and when, with the code and with similar councils. The methodology sets out how comparisons are made.

Sources

This guide describes the law and does not give legal advice. If anything on this page is wrong, please get in touch. Corrections are made promptly and noted on the page.