Open accounts local democracy project
Your rights to inspect accounts and how to do it
This document is part of the Bureau’s council finances investigation open folder.
This document contains the following sections:
The idea
During a set period each year the public has the right to inspect the accounts of every local authority in the UK. The power is supposed to make local government, and other public bodies, more transparent and accountable. In theory, it provides an opportunity to scrutinise documents that may not even be obtainable under the Freedom of Information Act. In reality, most people are unaware of their rights and fewer still are making use of them. That is where this project and guide comes in.
We want members of our network to help test how this law is being implemented across the UK. We have a suggestion of the information you might ask for but you are also free to use this guide to ask for anything else you might be interested in. The idea is to record and share what you find and your experience of using the legislation.
We hope the information you obtain will lead to local and national stories. But we also plan to submit our collective findings to the government, as we have previously done during our ongoing investigation into the local council funding crisis, and to take what we learn from this pilot and turn it into a yearly exercise in crowdsourced local democracy.
How can I help?
If you would like to take part in this project, here is what we would like you to do
What information should I ask for?
After reading this guide you should know the sort of documents you can inspect and how to make this request. We would encourage you to ask for whatever information interests you. But if you would like to help us obtain information for a wider story, that would be great.
As you know, the Bureau Local has written a series of stories about the local government funding crisis. An area we are particularly interested in exploring in more detail is the growing number of councils speculating on the property market in an attempt to replace lost funding with increased rental income. Specifically, we would like to know about the property consultants councils are using to facilitate these deals. Spelthorne Borough Council, for example, paid US consultancy firm Cushman & Wakefield £2.3 million during its spending spree on commercial property, more than any other council contractor.
The councils listed in the spreadsheet have invested in the property market in recent years. We would love for people to sign up to ask each council for copies of the contracts they have with external property consultants, so we can collect all the information together to see how private interests are benefitting from arranging these deals, which often involve borrowing tens of millions of pounds from the public purse.
How do I do it?
Local authorities should provide an email address, or other contact detail, via which you can submit a request. This will either be listed in the Statutory Notice of Public Inspection of Accounts or provided to you by contacting the council.
We have produced a template you can fill in and use to arrange to inspect documents about property consultants. In the same document you’ll also find a generic template that can be used to request access to other information.
We would like to thank People’s Audit for their help in creating these templates.
Local authorities will require time to prepare the documents you have requested. You can ask that they make copies and send them to you, or you can arrange to attend in person and collect/copy them yourself. Either way there could be a charge. See more on this in our guide below.
I would like to take part but I don’t feel able to
We’re keen for as many people as possible to take part in this project, especially network members who might not otherwise have the opportunity to do so. If there is a barrier to you doing so, such as the costs of travel or childcare, please let us know. We have set aside a budget to help involve people with accessibility challenges. If you would like to know more, please contact our community organiser, Rachel Hamada, on community@tbij.com.
Equally there might be costs relating to your request - for example, copying or sending documents - which we may within reason be able to help with. Please let us know these details and we can discuss further.
Next steps
Once you have signed up to cover one of the listed councils, or a local authority you have added to the list, it would be great if you could keep the spreadsheet updated with your progress. Even if you are not able to obtain the documents you are interested in, your experience will prove very helpful in shaping both our feedback to the government and potential future projects.
Ideally a substantial number of you will get copies of interesting documents that might go on to inform news stories, research, political debate, local activism or another such outcome.
Unlike other Bureau Local investigations, we are not asking for you to agree to an embargo. However, if you could credit or mention The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in whatever work you produce it would be appreciated.
Your right to inspect - a guide
The UK public has the right to inspect, ask questions about and challenge items in a local authority’s accounts. The following is a short guide about those rights and how to use them. Note: The following examples refer to England. For information about Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the rights differ, please see this part of the guide.
The law
The public’s right to inspect local authority accounts is set out by the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, which is detailed and extended by the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 and the Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017.
A local resident, interested person or journalist (see below for definitions) has the legal right to inspect an authority’s accounts and related documents. If you are an elector in the area you can also:
These rights can only be exercised during a 30 working-day period, set out by the authority each year.
What bodies does the law apply to?
As well as all types of local authority - London borough, metropolitan district, unitary, country and district councils, as well as smaller parish councils - the right to inspect applies to other public bodies such as police, fire and other rescue authorities, national parks, combined authorities and internal drainage boards. They do not apply to any NHS body.
Who can inspect the accounts?
In England, an interested person or journalist can inspect the accounts during the inspection period. Local electors have a further right to ask the auditor questions and even object to the accounts. These rights are not open to journalists or interested persons. People with a connection to the area in question - such as business rate payers - are deemed interested persons.
The Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 extended the right of inspection to journalists, regardless of where they live. The Act defines journalists as “any person who produces for publication journalistic materials (whether paid to do so or otherwise)”. The key difference in the rights elsewhere in the UK is who can make use of them. See further below for details.
What can you inspect?
You can inspect the accounts to be audited and all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts relating to them for that financial year. You can copy all, or part, of these accounts and related documents, but you may have to pay for copies.
What limits are there?
You cannot ask to inspect or copy documents unrelated to the accounts.
The documents have to relate to the relevant year’s accounts. For example, during the current period you can only inspect the 2018/19 accounts and related documents.
You cannot request documents that include personal information about staff. The exception is for information relating to senior employees’ salary. A senior employee is defined as someone earning more than £150,000 a year or someone on at least £50,000 and holding a senior management position.
You may also be blocked from inspecting information deemed commercially confidential. The following is from the National Audit Office:
This is information which would prejudice commercial confidentiality if it was released to the public and there is not, set against this, a very strong reason in the public interest why it should nevertheless be disclosed.
When can you inspect the accounts and related records?
There must be a 30 working-day period, called the ‘inspection period’ or the ‘period for the exercise of public rights’, during which you can exercise your statutory right to inspect the accounts.
Local authorities are required to inform the public, through an online notice, that the accounts and documents are available to inspect, for example here. Note: our research has found some of these notices do not contain contact details to arrange the inspection.
The inspection period must include a common period during which all local authority accounts are available to inspect. For the 2018/19 accounts the period for large authorities (i.e. all councils other than parish) is 3-14 June. Note: Your local authority’s accounts will be available to inspect for a longer period, this is just an overlapping period where all accounts are open at the same time.
How to inspect
The notice published by local authorities should contain details of how to arrange an inspection. If not, you will have to contact the council directly and ask for the relevant contact details.
You can request to attend in person to inspect the documents or you can ask for copies to be made and sent to you. There may be a cost related to copying and sending the documents (although we are aware of councils not charging as long as the request is not excessive).
You can ask another person to go with you and that person does not have to live in the area. You should tell the authority in good time. The auditor cannot help you but if you are an elector you can ask them questions about the accounts.
For templates that will help you make an inspection request, see here.
You should try and be as specific as possible about what you want to inspect.
Try and give the local authority as much notice as possible.
Asking questions and objecting to the accounts
Local electors have the right to ask the auditor questions about and to object to a local authority’s accounts. These rights are covered in detail in this guide.
What about the rest of the UK?
We really want people in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to take part in this project. However, there are some key differences in the right to inspect local authority accounts in these countries.
Unlike in England, the relevant legislation has not been amended to take into account the wider, journalistic interest in scrutinising a local authority’s finances. This means that to inspect accounts in Wales or Northern Ireland you must be an elector in the area to which the accounts relate. In Scotland the powers are slightly more accessible, but you still have to have a connection to the locality.
Who can inspect local authority accounts?
Furthermore, there is not a common period of inspection in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, making it difficult for us to provide you with dates between which you will definitely be able to inspect accounts no matter where you live in these countries. The inspection periods for each local authority are still required to be published on each authority’s website.
We would still greatly encourage network members in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to take part and to add their experiences to the spreadsheet.