Every council must publish a monthly list of every payment over £500: date, supplier, amount. The raw chequebook. It lets you see who a council pays and whether it pays more than its neighbours for the same thing (supplier concentration, price dispersion, off-contract spend). Caveat: published on each council's own website with no central file — this folder holds a representative three-council sample and an estimate of what a full collection would take.
Sourcing details, files and caveats: SOURCE.md.
Variables this dataset yields: VARIABLES.md · browse variables/.