The Isle of Wight Council has failed to meet the Government-set deadline to publishing its spending data on the Web.
Update 11.Jan.11: We’ve finally been told that the council with publish on 24 January 2011.
VentnorBlog has been asking the council about this ages, and it’s a policy set-down by the Government.
It was on 5th June, 2010 that Conservative MP Eric Pickles ordered all local authorities to publish the details of the amounts of £500+ that they’d spent of tax payer’s money.
Transparency is important
He, as the Government minister responsible for local government, thought transparency was important – that it was important that tax-payers could look up what their money was being spent on by their council. Some councils like the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead even did it without being asked.
The Council has given VentnorBlog and other Islanders various assurances as to when they data would be made available. All of them have passed without the data being delivered.
Assurances broken
Way back in October they told us, “The requirement by Government is, I believe, for it to be up and running in January and we should be well within that.”
Hampshire, a much large local authority, with correspondingly much more data, published their data back on 1st November last year, with the headline ‘Hampshire Increases Local Transparency.’
Keeping public information off the Web
Back in November the council took the decision not to publish the register of Isle of Wight Council’s Members’ interests and hospitality online. Those who want to access this public information have to visit County Hall and request to see it.
We’ve been in contact with the council today, but as yet it’s unclear why the council has failed to meet the deadline.
Image: mthierry under CC BY-SA 2.0
