The Local Council Report / Revenue Outturn / Council class · markdown view

Council class

category · extracted · council-year

Not a money number at all: this is the label saying what kind of council this is — for example a small district that mainly does bins and planning, or a large county or city council that also runs schools support and social care. It matters because different kinds of councils are responsible for completely different things, so a fair comparison is only ever between councils of the same kind. There is no high or low here — just make sure you compare like with like.

Definition

namecouncil-class
dataset01-revenue-outturn
kindextracted
typecategorical
unitcategory
graincouncil-year
rolestratifier
sourcedata/Revenue_Outturn_time_series_data_v3.2.csv, columns `LA_class` and `LA_subclass`
periodFY 2017-18 to 2024-25, annual (year_ending 201803-202503)
missingness"Rows with status other than "submitted" (i.e. "total" aggregates and "not submitted") must be filtered out; a non-submitted council-year is a genuine gap, not zero. 2024-25 covers 410/411 councils. Councils abolished/created in 2017-25 reorganisations appear only for the years they existed. Class can change when a council is reorganised (e.g. districts merged into a unitary) — match on `ONS_code` per year, not name."
score_noteEssential stratifier with perfect availability, but pure context — it carries no efficiency signal itself.
peer_groupcouncil class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard

The council's comparator group — Met District, Unitary, London Borough, Shire County/District — plus a finer subclass. Every comparison in this dataset must be stratified by it: classes carry different statutory responsibilities, so cross-class comparisons are invalid without noting that responsibilities differ.