For each council service, how much of the money goes on the council's own staff versus buying things in — contractors, supplies, outsourced providers. It reveals how the council delivers: with its own workforce or through contracts. Neither model is automatically better, but if a council shifts work to contractors and the service then gets more expensive, that points to a bad deal.
| name | employee-vs-running-costs-per-service |
|---|---|
| dataset | 01-revenue-outturn |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | £000 per year |
| grain | council-year |
| role | feature |
| source | "data/Revenue_Outturn_time_series_data_v3.2.csv, `_empl` and `_run_exp` suffix columns on any RO service line (e.g. `RO3_asctot_empl`, `RO3_asctot_run_exp`)" |
| period | "FY 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." |
| score_note | Rich raw family revealing delivery model, but the staff-cost-share ratio carries the interpretable signal — this is its feed. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Employee expenditure versus running (bought-in) expenses for each RO service line, revealing the delivery model: in-house staffing versus outsourced provision. Note _empl is staff expenditure (£000), never headcount. Feeds the staff-cost-share constructed variable; a shift toward running costs plus rising unit cost flags a bad contract.