The LGA provides practical guidance to support local authorities in understanding and implementing the local government transparency code 2015 and to help them publish the data in a meaningful and consistent way.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) published a local government transparency code (‘the Code’) in 2015 that sets out the data that local authorities should be publishing, the frequency it should be published and how it should be published. A frequently asked questions document is also provided at the same link.
In January 2025, MHCLG added guidance for reconciling publication requirements of the procurement act 2023 and the local government transparency code 2015.
The Code requires local authorities in England to publish information related to the following themes:
- expenditure over £500
- government procurement card transactions
- procurement information
- grants to voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations
- organisation chart
- senior salaries
- the pay multiple
- trade union facility time
- local land assets
- social housing asset value
- parking accounts and parking spaces
- fraud
- the constitution.
Guidance documents
The LGA provides a set of practical guidance documents to support local authorities in understanding and implementing the Code and to help them publish the data in a meaningful and consistent way.
The documents were produced by the LGA in consultation with MHCLG (DCLG at the time), the Local e-Government Standards Body (LeGSB at the time, and now known as iStandUK) and local authorities. They provide more detail on both the mandatory and recommended elements of the Code and should be read in conjunction with the Code and the associated frequently asked questions document.
The documents offer practical help and advice, both to meet the immediate targets of publishing data, and to adopt consistent approaches that will add most value for local people and public services over the longer term. Very specific or technical queries about specific aspects of the Code should however be directed to MHCLG.
Important note
The ‘publishing spending and procurement information’ guidance document was updated in August 2025 to reflect the new MHCLG guidance for reconciling publication requirements of the procurement act 2023 and the local government transparency code 2015
The remaining guidance documents were produced in 2015 when the Code was introduced. Whilst the approaches and principles contained in the documents remain correct, some of the context may have changed in specific areas, and certain links may no longer work.
The LGA has no current plans to update these documents, although we are keeping this under review and will update this page if the position changes.
The guidance is divided into four themes:
- Publishing data (general guidance relevant to all requirements of the Code) (updated 2020)
- Publishing spending and procurement information (updated August 2025)
- Publishing organisation information (updated 2015)
- Publishing land and social housing asset and parking information (updated 2015)
Open data schemas
The LGA, together with LeGSB, local authorities and Porism, and with input from data users, also developed templates and schemas for most of the datasets.
The templates provide a guide on what to include when publishing data and can be found in the annexes of each of the guidance documents. The schemas are tabular formats for publishing the data in spreadsheets. These schemas can be used on a voluntary basis and provide a standard format for local authorities to publish data – enabling easy access, reuse and comparison between different areas.
The open data schemas are available to all local authorities via LG Inform Plus.
For further information, please email [email protected].