01 / For Councils
See your position in context.
Bring an informed perspective to priorities, performance and conversations with peers.
Local government, in perspective
The context behind your next decision.
Monitum brings together what English principal authorities publish about their finances and performance, so it can be read in context, compared fairly between similar authorities and followed over time.
A focused introduction, shaped around your organisation.
A different perspectiveOne place.
Monitum / A closer look
One place.
A wider perspective.
Intelligence · Context · Conversation
Illustrative publication cover
Evidence, not a league table.
Different questions.
A shared perspective.
Start with what you need to understand. We’ll show you how Monitum could support the work you do.
02 / For recruiters
Make the next conversation count.
Understand the context your candidates will enter, and where their experience could be relevant.
03 / Baseline Packs
Get closer to one place.
Commission a comprehensive research pack that gives your team a clear starting point for deeper discussion.
A considered view
Useful intelligence starts with better context.
A figure on its own rarely settles the question. Monitum brings evidence into a conversation about what matters to you.
Grounded in published evidence
What a Council publishes about its finances and performance is the starting point, read alongside similar authorities rather than ranked against them.
Designed around your work
Councils, recruiters and interim agencies ask different questions, so each conversation starts from the question you are trying to answer.
A closer look, together
A demonstration is a short conversation built around your organisation, using a small selected example rather than the whole product.
Overspending has become the norm.
That’s why you need more information.
Set a Council’s budget beside what it went on to spend, and the first thing you see is an overspend. It is the usual picture, not the unusual one.
Across the four years to 2024-25, between 57% and 75% of the Council service lines we could compare were recorded as spending above budget, depending on the type of Council. Children’s social care was recorded above budget in 84% to 96% of cases across the four upper-tier types, and the whole-Council total in 66% to 91% across the five types (in each case counting each line or Council once for each year). It is a pattern shared across the sector, not a mark against any one Council.
The budget and the outturn are separate returns, and they are not like-for-like: they do not always record internal recharges and income in the same way, so part of any gap is in how it is recorded.
So a Council that has overspent has told you very little. Most of them have.
What tells you something is a Council that is unusual for its type on a service line: well outside what similar Councils recorded on the same line, or outside it year after year. That is the comparison Monitum is designed to make. A Council that stands out against its peers is a pointer, not a finding.
Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Revenue Account (budget) and Revenue Outturn returns, 2021-22 to 2024-25. Published data under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Monitum analysis, by service line and Council type, of the lines that can be compared.
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