The council's total yearly bill for running all its services put together — care, bins, housing, roads, libraries and the rest. It is the single headline number for how big the council's operation is, and the base most other comparisons are built on. A bigger number mostly just means a bigger council serving more people; it only becomes meaningful when compared per resident, over time, or against similar councils.
| name | total-service-expenditure |
|---|---|
| dataset | 01-revenue-outturn |
| kind | extracted |
| type | numeric |
| unit | £000 per year |
| grain | council-year |
| role | denominator |
| source | "data/Revenue_Outturn_time_series_data_v3.2.csv, column `RS_totsx_net_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 | The master denominator — indispensable context, but by itself it separates big councils from small ones, not good from bad. |
| peer_group | council class (district / county / unitary / metropolitan / London) — not yet scored on the leaderboard |
Net cost of running all council services in the year, in £ thousands, one row per council per year (filter status = submitted). It is the master denominator for overhead and spend-mix ratios and the base for spend-per-resident and trend measures. Compare only within LA_class — shire districts and counties split responsibilities, so levels are not comparable across classes. Data are as-submitted and subject to revision.