Nottingham City Council is committed to openness and transparency in making meaningful spending data available to the public. We will be publishing all our relevant spend with trade suppliers on a quarterly basis.

The data will be published in CSV (comma-separated values) format; the report will be available to download from the section below. It lists all relevant trade supplier payments excluding VAT, from 1st April 2011 onward.

Payments to Suppliers (All)

To assist with understanding this report, the following table explains the headings in the report.

Data inclusion

The data includes all trade supplier payments, purchase card payments, foreign payments and CHAPs (Clearing House Automated Payment System) payments.

The information will show the following payment types:

• Payments for works, supplies and services
• Payments to suppliers and sole traders
• Payments to third party service providers
• Rent, business rates and policy-related lending
• Credit Notes
• Transactions with other public bodies
• Payments related to Adults and Children – where to an organisation
• Payments for Councillors & Chief Officers – where to an organisation
• Payments for staff expenses – where to an organisation

Data redaction

The following information has been redacted in line with sections 1 and 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998:

• Payments to foster carers, adult social carers, children in care providers
• Payments to individuals from legal/insurance processes
• Settlements made with companies as an arbitration which is conditional on confidentiality
• Competition prizes - where a normal part of operations
• Potential betrayal of a commercial confidence, or prejudice to a legitimate commercial interest
• Compensation payments to individuals
• Payments to Councillors & Chief Officers - where individual named
• Payments for staff expenses - where individual named
• Councillors Allowances - where individual named (The full details of Councillors Allowances are published on Nottingham City website.)

Data exclusion

In accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and Freedom of Information Act 2000 and best practice as set out in the Local Government Group publication ‘Local transparency: a practitioner’s guide to publishing local spending data’, the following payments are not included:

• Salary payments to staff
• Senior officers’ remuneration (This information is published in the Statement of Accounts –Officers Remuneration.)
• Pension contributions
• Payments to HMRC for VAT, PAYE, NI and Pensions
• Severance payments
• Transactions relating to the financing or underwriting of debt
• Provisions or promises to pay not yet realised
• Housing Benefits
• Refunds of overpayments to the Council
• Distribution of Government funds to other organisations.

Data Assurance

To ensure consistency and clarity of the data, the following adjustments have been made to the original data:

• Post code for purchase card payments, where no information was available, the cell is blank.
• “Redacted General Supplier” is quoted under Supplier Name where the information is insufficient to identify the supplier in purchase card payments. For example, the supplier name is recorded as “car park”.
• “Redacted Personal Data” is quoted under Supplier Name where the information is not publicly available or is of a sensitive nature. For example, the supplier name is the name of foster carer.
• “Redacted Other Spend” is quoted under Expenditure Category where the description can be difficult to understand by audience. For example, the description is called “suspense”.
• Expenditure Category has been updated where appropriate to clarify the type of expenditure.
• Transaction number for trade suppliers is shown as a 7 digit number; for purchase card payments it is shown as PC: (date of transaction); for foreign payments it is shown as FP: (date of transaction) and for CHAPs payments it is shown as CHAPS: (date of transaction)

How do I get additional information on Council Spend?

If you have any queries regarding the data, please contact data.access@nottinghamcity.gov.uk. If your enquiry relates to a particular transaction please include transaction number and amount of the transaction.