In an act of apparent goodwill (or perhaps just a vague compliance with the Local Government Transparency Code 2015), Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) generously publishes its expenditure for public scrutiny.
Citizens can, in theory, hold their elected officials accountable by downloading a mass of data to review every financial transaction over £500.
How commendable!
Except, of course, for the minor detail that OCC’s financial records resemble an avant-garde abstract painting rather than a coherent set of accounts.
A deep dive into the publicly available data performed by Oxford resident and accountant Will Nicholas, in his research into local authority financial transparency, reveals something truly spectacular: a financial system so opaque, so baffling, and so utterly contradictory that one could almost believe it was designed that way on purpose.
Consider this – the OCC’s data is categorised into Services, General Ledger Codes, and Suppliers.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Until you realise that Oxfordshire has graced us with 794 different Service categories and 209 different General Ledger Codes, rendering the entire system an exercise in interpretive guesswork.
For contrast, let’s take a look at Bedfordshire’s equivalent data. Their dataset boasts a mere 16 Service categories, a model of clarity compared to Oxfordshire’s labyrinthine 794 categories.
Not to mention that Bedfordshire, in a remarkable act of competence, hasn’t left any data blank.
Oxfordshire, on the other hand? Well, let’s just say they seem to have an enthusiasm for blank spaces that would make a crossword puzzle designer weep with joy.
In the year-to-date expenditure reports (Jan-Nov 2024, as December was still hiding in the shadows when we did our analysis), we discovered:
- £266,764,687 of expenditures filed under a blank General Ledger code (a casual 28% of total expenditure, no big deal!)
- £30,235,144 categorised under a blank Service (a mere 3%—practically precise by OCC standards!)
Then there are the truly glorious misclassifications.
Take, for example, the case of the £41,325,913 expenditure logged under the General Ledger Code “B*Cycle Tracks” but categorised under the Service category of “Care Homes.” Unless Oxfordshire’s elderly and vulnerable are secretly participating in a county-wide Tour de France, this raises more than a few questions.
Or how about the £5,122,609 recorded as “B* Bus Shelter Repairs and Cleansing,” while simultaneously categorised under “Independent Foster”? Are we to believe Oxfordshire’s foster care system involves scrubbing bus stops as a Dickensian character-building exercise?
And let’s not forget the small matter of £7,715,132 that OCC has labelled under “Corporate Finance” while being assigned the General Ledger code of “Miscellaneous Grants to Others.” Which others? Who knows! Perhaps a black hole in the council’s accounts department.
One might wonder whether this chaos is a simple case of gross incompetence, or if there is something more concerning lurking beneath the surface. Either way, Oxfordshire’s approach to financial transparency is about as clear as a mud puddle.
Independent Oxford Alliance candidate for Cutteslowe and Wolvercote, Inga Nicholas, is calling for an immediate audit to ensure accountability and, frankly, to answer some deeply troubling questions about where Council taxpayer money is actually going.
Because right now, the only thing transparent about Oxfordshire County Council’s finances is their commitment to confusion.