See exactly where your council tax goes — for all 317 English councils.
civaccount.co.uk · Free · Independent · .gov.uk data only
CivAccount turns 15,000+ scattered data points across 317 English councils' budget documents into one clean, accessible website. Look up your council, see your tax bill, see where every pound goes, compare against neighbours. Every figure links back to its .gov.uk source.
Built for UK residents who pay council tax and want to know what happens to their money.
- 317 council dashboards — budget breakdown, tax bands, CEO salary, suppliers, financial health
- Head-to-head compare — any two councils, side by side
- National insights — rankings, league tables, postcode lottery data
- 4 plain-English guides — how council tax works, how spending is structured, who runs your council, how to influence decisions
- Town Hall — residents propose and vote on how their council should spend money
- Developer API — free JSON per-council endpoints + embeddable iframe widgets, no key, 100 req/min
- Data provenance — per-field source URLs for every council (317 pages)
- WCAG 2.1 AA accessible, designed for 44px tap targets + plain English
Next.js 16 (App Router, Turbopack) · React 19 · TypeScript 5 · Tailwind CSS 4 · shadcn/ui · Supabase (auth + Town Hall) · Vercel
The compiled dataset lives in a private repository that's fetched at build time using a token. This public repo contains the application code, a small fixture of 3 councils for local development, and automation scripts.
civaccount/ # ← this repo (public, MIT code)
├── src/
│ ├── app/ # Next.js App Router
│ ├── components/ # UI + dashboard cards
│ ├── data/
│ │ ├── councils-fixtures/ # 3-council fixture for local dev
│ │ └── councils/ # Private submodule (.gitignored)
│ └── lib/
├── scripts/ # Build + validation scripts
└── public/ # Static assets, llms.txt, robots.txt
git clone https://github.com/wulfsagedev/civaccount.git
cd civaccount
npm install
npm run devBy default you'll see the site running against the 3-council fixture (Kent, Birmingham, Westminster). All pages work; non-fixture councils show 404 in dev.
Open http://localhost:3000.
Everything comes from UK government sources — no third-party aggregators:
- Council Tax 2025-26 (GOV.UK / MHCLG)
- Revenue Expenditure (GOV.UK / MHCLG)
- ONS Population Estimates (Mid-2024)
- Individual council
.gov.ukwebsites (Pay Policy Statements, Members' Allowances schemes, budget documents) - DEFRA Local Authority Waste Statistics
- Local Government Boundary Commission for England
Full methodology: civaccount.co.uk/methodology
Free, public, no key required.
GET /api/v1/councils/[slug] # Full record for one council
GET /api/v1/councils?search=kent # Filtered search (slim records, max 20)
GET /api/v1/diffs?since=2026-04-01 # Data-change feed
Full docs + embed snippets: civaccount.co.uk/developers
Dual licence:
- Code — MIT. Use, modify, distribute.
- Compiled dataset — CivAccount Data Licence. View and cite individual figures with attribution. No bulk copying, redistribution, or competing products.
The underlying raw government data is Crown Copyright under the Open Government Licence v3.0 and freely available from GOV.UK.
Bug reports and fixes to the application code are welcome — open an issue or pull request. For the data layer (adding councils, refreshing figures, enrichment), see CONTRIBUTING.md.
CivAccount is an independent civic-tech project. Not affiliated with any UK council, government body, political party, or commercial data aggregator.
Made by wulfsage · civaccount.co.uk