How To Read This Site, And How To Check Whether We Got It Right
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
In short. Numbers in double brackets are citations, and each one leads to a document you can open. Tags tell you the subject. Anything we think, as opposed to anything we found, is written so you can tell the difference. If we are wrong, tell us, and the fix is recorded publicly.
A scrutiny site asks you to take its word for things, which is exactly what it should not do. The method statement for this site sets out the rules we work to [1]. This piece is the practical companion: how to use those rules to check us.
The numbers are the whole point
A claim on this site looks like this: the council spent a stated sum on a stated thing [2]. The bracketed number is a citation. It appears in the same sentence as the claim, not at the end of the paragraph and not at the end of the article, and it leads to the document the claim came from. At the foot of every piece is a numbered source list with the full reference and a link.
Two habits make this useful rather than decorative. Read the source, not the summary of it. And check that the citation actually supports the sentence it sits in, because a citation that leads to a real document which says something slightly different is the most common way for a wrong claim to look right.
If a claim on this site has no citation, it is either a statement of opinion, which should be obvious from how it is written, or it is a mistake, which we want to know about.
The tags
Six tags, each meaning one thing. SPENDING covers accounts, budgets, contracts and payments. MEETINGS covers agendas, minutes and what was decided. PLANNING covers applications, decisions and appeals. FOI covers what freedom of information responses disclose. ANALYSIS covers pieces that work across several documents rather than reporting one. CORRECTION marks a piece that exists to fix an earlier error.
Getting the documents yourself
Most of what we use is already published, and you do not need permission to read it. Councils must publish spending over 500 pounds, contracts, land holdings and senior salaries under the transparency code [2]. Committee meetings have been open to the press and public since 1960 [3], and agendas and minutes go on the council website. Anything else held by a council is subject to the Freedom of Information Act [4], subject to its exemptions.
There is also a right that most people have never heard of. For a set period each summer, any interested person can inspect a council's accounts and the invoices, contracts and receipts behind them. Not a summary: the underlying documents. We have written that up separately [5].
When we make an FOI request we prefer to do it through a public platform, so the response arrives with a permanent public address that anyone can cite, including people who disagree with us.
Every principal council in England, with its website, is listed on our register of councils.
Fact and comment
What a document says is reported as fact, with the document attached. What we make of it is a judgement, and it is written so that you can see it is one. The build system enforces the boundary mechanically: a piece that makes an evaluative claim about a public body without a citation in the same sentence will not publish. That gate exists to protect the reader from us.
Officers below decision-making level are described by role rather than named. Decisions are made by named people acting in public roles, and those we do name.
When we get it wrong
Tell us. A correction request is most useful when it identifies the specific sentence and the document that contradicts it.
Substantive errors are corrected in the article itself, with a note saying what changed and when, and recorded permanently in the corrections log. We do not quietly edit the record. A site that scrutinises other people's paperwork and then silently rewrites its own has given up the only thing that makes it worth reading.
Anything critical of a named body goes to that body for response before it is published, and the piece records what came back, including the silences.
Sources
- Civic Scrutiny, "What this site is and how it works" (the method statement these practices come from).
- Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, "Local government transparency code 2015" (the publication duties on English local authorities). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-government-transparency-code-2015
- Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 (the right of press and public to attend meetings). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/8-9/67
- Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the general right of access to information held by public authorities). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents
- Civic Scrutiny, "Your right to inspect the council's accounts" (the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 inspection period).