Local Spending in England

This map provides a summary of Local Spending, which is the public expenditure that can be directly linked to a local authority area. It is based on publicly available data collected at 3 year intervals between financial years (FY) 2009-10 and 2018-19. Local Spending is less than 50% of public expenditure, which means that most public expenditure cannot easily be tracked back to local authorities.

Local Spending is not the same as council spending. Local Spending includes:

• Benefits and pensions - which are defined by the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP)
• Health services - which is defined by the Department of Health
• Schools - which is defined by the Department for Education
• Council spending, which includes social care - which is defined by local authorities, but subject to central regulations

This means most public expenditure is not accountable to local citizens and even most Local Spending is not accountable to local citizens. This data is provided to help people understand what money is spent locally, to improve accountability and also to demonstrate the severe, if very uneven, impact of Austerity policies form 2010 onwards. A full report on the findings from this research will be published shortly.