Hammersmith and Fulham Council plans to make public all its payments to the voluntary sector in what it calls a bid to become ‘Britain’s most transparent council’.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is already trying to spearhead a culture of transparency in local councils by asking them to make their external payments clear to the public.

But Hammersmith and Fulham says it intends to go further than any other local authority by providing visibility of its payments to the voluntary sector, members’ allowances and expenses, the register of buildings and land owned by the council and total spend as recorded in its finance system.

IT company Spikes Cavell has undertaken to adapt the spotlightonspend platform to facilitate the access by the general public and open data community to these new data pools.

Harry Phibbs, cabinet minister for community engagement at Hammersmith and Fulham Council said: “We don’t want to simply grudgingly comply with the government requirements on external payments as just a box-ticking exercise.

“We saw tremendous scope to work closely with Spikes Cavell and its spotlightonspend platform to take transparency much further.

“The vast majority of spending any council undertakes is not payments to suppliers, but rather its ongoing running costs and operational investments.

“Information not only needs to be transparent and accessible, but also intelligible to the general public so that it is meaningful and easily understood."